"The House is not sitting this afternoon. You know it rises for the Easter vacation to-morrow."

"On Thursday I go down to Hazels. I wanted that bad person, Mary Gray, to come with me. She says she has to work at her book. Did you ever hear such stuff and nonsense? As though the world can't get on without one young woman's book. I told her she could do it at Hazels. She says she couldn't--that she'll have to be out all day long. London will not tempt her out, she says. Is she to go bending her back and dimming her eyes while the lambs are at play in the fields and the primroses thick in the woods?"

"She's an obstinate person, Mrs. Morres. When she has made up her mind to do a thing----"

"Ah! you know her pretty well."

"We first met about nine years ago."

"Dear me! I had no idea that you were such old friends. I thought you met first in this house."

"Lady Anne Hamilton, the old lady who adopted Miss Gray, was my mother's friend."

He said nothing about the fact that twelve hours ago he had not known Mary Gray for the child he had played with for one afternoon, nor of the long gap between that occasion and their next meeting. Not from any disingenuousness; but he had a feeling that he liked to keep that meeting of long ago to himself.

"Dear me, to be sure you would be interested in Mary. You would know a good deal about her. Nine years--it is a long time."

If he had been the most consummate plotter he could not better have paved the way for the suggestion he was about to make.

"Put off your return to Hazels till Sat.u.r.day morning. I want to take you and Miss Gray into the country for a day on Thursday."

"Indeed, young man! And wait for the Sat.u.r.day crowd of holiday-makers! A nice figure I should be struggling among them."

"I will be at Victoria to see you off."

"Oh, you needn't do that." Mrs. Morres turned about with the inconsequence of her s.e.x. "I've brought one of the maids up with me. She will take care of me better than most men. She is alarming, this good Susan, to the people who don't know her. But I thought you were going abroad?"

"So I am. Sat.u.r.day morning will do me very well."

"How did you know I was in town? No one is supposed to. All the blinds are down in front and will be till her Ladyship returns."

"Miss Gray told me. I saw her yesterday."

She looked at him sharply. His honest, plain face rea.s.sured her. A friendship of nine years, too. What trouble could there possibly arise after a friendship of nine years? Mary must know that he was all but engaged to his cousin.

"Does she approve of the country trip?"

"I have not asked her. I left that to you to do. She has been shut up in London all the winter. She needs a breath of country air."

"So she does. She shows the London winter, though you may not see it.

Very well, you shall take us both into the country on Thursday. Mary will not dream of refusing me."

"That is it. She means to spend those six days between Thursday and Wednesday toiling at her book. I have heard her say that she will spend Thursday at the British Museum."

"Stuff and nonsense, she shan't! The world will do just as well without the book. She must come to Hazels on Sat.u.r.day. You will help me to persuade her?"

"I will do my best. How did you leave Hazels?"

"Lovely. For the rest, a wilderness of despairing dogs. They will forgive me if I bring back Mary. By the way, what have you got for me to do on Friday? If you will keep me in town when all the shops are shut!

Not that it matters. I've finished all my shopping. But am I to spend my Good Friday here, in this room? London streets are no place for a poor woman on Good Friday."

"Will you go to church? There is a service at a church near here, with Bach's Pa.s.sion music."

"I should like to, of all things. Afterwards, perhaps, Mary would give us tea at her eyrie. You and she must dine with me. She is coming this evening to dinner. Come back to dinner at half-past seven and help me to persuade her. I can only give you a chop. Some mysterious person in the lower region cooks for me. She is the plainest of the plain."

"It will be a banquet, with you."

Sir Robin was not a young man who paid compliments easily. When he did pay one it had always an air of sincerity. Mrs. Morres looked pleased.

She was very fond of Robin Drummond.

When he and Mary met at the door a few hours later he made a jest about their dining together again so soon, and they laughed about it--to be sure, that dinner at the restaurant was a secret, something that did not belong to the conventional life. There was the air of a little understanding between them when they presented themselves to Mrs. Morres in the book-room which she used for all purposes of a sitting-room during her flying visit to town. It was a pleasant room, with book-cases all round it filled with green gla.s.s in a lattice of bra.s.s-work. The books were hidden by the gla.s.s, but it reflected every movement of a bird or a twig or a cloud outside like green waters. The ceiling was domed like a sky and painted in sunny Italian scenery. It was not dull in the book-room on the dullest day.

"Did you come together?" Mrs. Morres asked curiously.

"I swear we did not," Sir Robin replied, with mock intensity. "I came from the east, Miss Gray from the west. We met on your doorstep."

"You looked as if you were enjoying a joke when you came in."

"There was time for one between the ringing of the bell and the opening of the door."

"Ah, you see, the people downstairs are very old."

Mary allowed herself to be persuaded to the country expedition next day.

The spring had been calling to her, calling to her to come out of London to the fields. More, she consented to go to Hazels on the Sat.u.r.day. The spring had disturbed her with a delicious disturbance. It was no use trying to be dry-as-dust since the spring had got into her blood. The book must wait till she came back.

On Thursday the exodus from town had not yet begun. They left soon after breakfast. As Mary hurried from her Kensington flat to Paddington Station she met the church-goers with their prayer-books in their hands.

It was Holy Thursday, to be sure--a day for solemn thought and thanksgiving. She hoped hers would not be less acceptable because it was made in the quietness of the fields.

It was an exquisite day of April--true Holy Week weather, with white clouds, like lambs straying in the blue pastures of the sky, shepherded by the south-west wind. The almond trees were in bloom. They had begun to drop their blossoms on the pavements, making a dust of roses in London streets. As they went down from Paddington the river-side orchards and gardens were starred with the blossom of pear and plum.

Everywhere the birds were singing jocundly. The promise of spring a few days earlier had been n.o.bly fulfilled.

The sun shone powerfully as they left the country station and went down a road set with bare hedges on either side. A week ago there had been frost. Now there was a grateful odour from the millions and millions of little spear-heads of gra.s.s that were pushing above the ground. On the banks by the side of the road there were primroses and violets, while there was yet a drift of last week's snow in the sheltered copses.

They found an inn by the side of the road. To the back of it lay a belt of woods. In front was a great stretch of cornfield and pasturage. In the distance a church-spire and yet other woods.

There was no village in sight. The village was, as a matter of fact, lying about its green and velvety common just a little way down the road. The place was full of the singing of the birds, and of another sound as sweet, the rushing of waters. A little river ran down from the higher country and pa.s.sed through the inn-garden, turning a water-wheel as it went. The picture on the old sign was of a water-wheel. The inn was called the Water-Wheel.

"What a name to think upon!" said Mary, with a sigh, "in a torrid London August! it sounds full of refreshment."

"Its patrons would no doubt prefer the Beer-Keg," said Mrs. Morres, and was reproached for being cynical on such a day.

While they waited for a meal they explored the delightful inn-garden. It was not Sir Robin's first visit, and he was able to point out to them the lions of the place. There was the landlord's aviary of canary-birds, so hardy that they lived in the open air all the year round. There were the ferrets in a cage. Not far off, in a proximity which must have profoundly interested the ferrets, there was an enclosure of white rabbits. There was a wild duck which had been picked up injured in the leg one cold winter, and had become tame and followed them about now from place to place. There were a peac.o.c.k and a peahen, a sty full of tiny, squeaking black piglets, hives of bees, all manner of pleasant country things. A lordly St. Bernard, with deep eyes of affection, followed Sir Robin as a well-remembered friend.

"Out in the woods," Sir Robin said, "there is a pond which later will be covered with water-lilies. The nightingales will have begun now. The wood is a grove of them. The landlord owned up handsomely when I came here first that 'they dratted things kept one awake at night.' I was only sorry they did not keep me. But after the first I slept too soundly."

"What did you find to do?" Mrs. Morres asked.

"Fish. There are plenty of trout in the upper reaches of the river."