Susy, who had about as much idea of measuring a room as she had of turning the heel of a stocking took her tapes out of her pocket and began an impossible task.

Jane watched her in silence for a moment or two, but Susy's futile attempts were too much for this deft, managing creature.

"Why don't you foot it?" she exclaimed. "My word, I never saw such a way to set to work. Here, you want the length of the room. I'll do it for you. Take your pencil and paper and jot down what I say. You haven't got any? That's a nice way of doing business. Well, then, I hope you have a good memory. I always measure a yard as I walk. Now, then, you count.

Here I begin--one, two, three--are you counting?"

"No," said Susy; "I'm greatly obliged, but you confuse me awfully. I won't do any more measuring to-day; I shouldn't sleep for a week if I had to keep all that in my head. Some men must come down from Liberty's or Morris's. Antonia prefers Morris, she says he's the most _chic_."

"I don't know what you mean by chick," said Jane Macalister, "unless you allude in some mysterious way to the fowls; but I am glad you've got sense enough not to undertake what Providence has given you no apt.i.tude for. Now, do you or do you not want to see the rest of the house? To a person like you, it's just like any other house, only nothing like so modern and nothing like so comfortable. There's a ghost in the tower----"

"A ghost," shrieked Susy; "I tremble at ghosts, I'm in terror at them; I won't go near the tower."

"I don't want to drag you there against your will. It's my private opinion that the ghost is made up of rats, but be that as it may, there's an awful scrimmage in the old tower at night. Now, then, will you see it, or will you not?"

"I think I won't," said Susy. "The Towers seems to be, from what you say, much like any other place. I hope my father has not been induced to pay too much for it."

"Hoots! he has got a place that mere money couldn't purchase unless the Lorrimers had come to grief. Don't you talk of what you know nothing about, child. The Towers is the Towers, sacred with memory and beautiful----; do you know why the Towers is beautiful, Miss Susy Drummond?"

"No, I'm sure I don't," said Susy, staring in astonishment at Jane, who had stalked up to her now and was staring her full in the face.

"Well, then, perhaps I'd better tell you, if it is for the last time.

The Towers is beautiful because for hundreds of years brave men have been born here and gentle n.o.ble women have lived here, and their influence has got somehow into the walls and into the furniture, and it pervades the rooms inside and out. It's bad to go against that kind of spirit and you and your father had better be careful when you come here, or you may rake up ghosts that you won't much care about. Now, if you'll have the goodness to go back to the others--you'll find them in the front drawing room. I'll return to my duties, which at the present moment consist of sh.e.l.ling peas and chucking raspberries. That's your way, Miss Susan Drummond, through that door, and if you're wise you'll remember my words."

CHAPTER XXII.

ANTONIA'S GIFT.

When Susan returned to the drawing room she saw no one there but Antonia, who, squatting on the floor, was absorbed heart and soul in copying her Chinese dragons. Susy was not in a humour to talk to Antonia, she therefore proceeded to go further afield. She was anxious to find Hester and Annie. The Towers, with its old-fashioned rooms and old-world furniture, had much disappointed her. It needs the sort of education which nothing could ever give to Susy Drummond, to appreciate a place like the Towers. Hester and Jane Macalister had also between them contrived to depress her, and it was a subdued and rather crestfallen Susy who now crossed the magnificent octagon hall in pursuit of the rest of her party.

Antonia meanwhile worked at her dragons with a will. If Susy were out of her element, Antonia was absolutely steeped in hers. The faded furniture, the subdued light, the rich colour of the magnificent china filled her really artistic nature with a sense of rejoicing. Behind all her affectations, Antonia had a soul. It had never been awakened yet.

All her life hitherto poor Antonia had spent her time with the most empty-headed and frivolous people. Only art seemed great and glorious and satisfying. She loved it sincerely, and for itself alone; she had no ambitions with regard to it, ambition was not a part of her queer nature; she would all her life be a humble votary at a lofty shrine. She did not imagine that there could be anything greater than art in the whole world. As yet her soul had not been really aroused, but the time of awakening was near.

Having made a rough, and, in truth, a very distorted sketch of the dragons, she gathered up her colours and portfolio, and prepared to search farther afield for objects on which to expend her genius. She followed Susy into the octagon hall, but, seeing the wide front doors open, went out, and, crossing a by no means well-kept field, entered the paddock, where the colts, Joe and Robin, had disported themselves before their sale. The paddock was skirted by a copse of small fir-trees, and Antonia sniffed the air as she walked towards it. Antonia was in a rusty black dress, with very little material in the skirt, and an extremely long train, which she never held up. She had just got to the edge of the copse of young trees, and was preparing to make a sketch of their straight trunks with the delicate sunlight shining across them, when a strange noise attracted her attention. She dropped her colour box, uttered one of her affected little shrieks, and then dropped on her knees beside a child who was lying face downwards on the gra.s.s. The child's dark hair completely covered her face, but the sobs which shook her slender little frame were too violent to be inaudible. Whatever ailed the child, she was prostrated by such a tempest of grief that Antonia forgot high art in an honest wish to comfort human misery.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ANTONIA AND NELL IN THE PADDOCK (_p._ 209).]

"Who are you?" she asked. "Can I do anything for you? What can be the matter with you? Have you lost your colour box?"

Antonia could understand grief at such a loss, hence her inquiry.

Nell turned a little when she was spoken to; dabbed her pocket-handkerchief into each eye, and then looked up at Antonia.

"I wish you'd go away," she said. "I don't want you. I have come away here to hide. I wish, I wish you'd go away!"

"I don't wish to trouble you in any way," replied Antonia, "but I can't go away, for I've come here to sketch. Your sobs don't disturb me now that I know there's nothing very serious the matter, so perhaps my presence won't disturb you. I'll sit here and not take the least notice of you. I must imprison that sunshine before it goes. You can sob away, I won't listen."

But to be told that you can sob as long as you like has generally the effect of stopping tears, and Nell, astonished at Antonia's appearance and words, presently sat up on the gra.s.s, and, flinging back her heavy mane of hair, watched the priestess of art with great interest. How could Antonia imprison a sunbeam? It sounded interesting! Nell blinked her eyes and looked at her solemnly.

"Well, child," said Antonia, pausing in her work, and giving her one of her slow glances, "I'm glad you're better; I never heard such distressing sobs. It's a great pity for you to cry so much, for you disfigure yourself; but I wish now that you are here you'd sit still, for I'd like to sketch you with that woebegone look. I never saw such a perfect ideal of true artistic beauty before."

"Beauty?" said Nell, with a little laugh. "But I'm called 'the ugly duckling'!"

"Charming!" exclaimed Antonia. "I'll immortalise this 'ugly duckling.'

She shall be the foreground for these pine trees, and the imprisoned sunbeams can light her up from behind."

Notwithstanding her sorrow, Nell found it intensely interesting to be made the foreground of a picture. She wondered how the imprisoned sunbeams would like their office of always shining round her head. Nell was by no means vain. She honestly believed herself to be a hideous little girl, but it was refreshing once, as a change, to be spoken of as a true artistic beauty. She thought that she would learn the phrase, and repeat it over when she looked at herself in the gla.s.s, or when Kitty and Harry became more than usually aggravating about her personal appearance.

Meanwhile, the artist dashed in her colours with fiery speed. Nell sat perfectly still, and gazed straight at Antonia. Suddenly a flood of colour spread itself all over her face. Was Antonia the new owner of the Towers? If so, _she_ was the cause of poor Nell's heart-broken sobs.

The younger members of the Lorrimer household had solemnly vowed an undying feud against the new owner of the Towers. They had established this feud with the solemnity of a sacred rite. They had made a bonfire and stood round it in a circle and joined hands, and declared the following awful formula:--

"Neither I, nor my children, nor my grandchildren, nor any of my descendants, will ever speak a friendly word to the new owner of my ancestral home. I wish the ghost of my ancestor, Hugh Lorrimer, who died in the Wars of the Roses, to haunt the new owner and his family; and I solemnly declare that I never will have part or lot with him or his."

This jargon had been made up by Harry, but each member of the feud, as they termed themselves, had solemnly repeated it, even down to little two-year-old Philip.

Suppose this wonderful, queer lady, who was making a sketch of Nell, was the new owner. In that case, it was Nell's duty to leave her at once.

"I want to ask you a question," said Nell.

"Yes--don't stir, please--ask me anything you like."

"Are you the new owner of my home?"

"I the new owner?" exclaimed Antonia. "Heavens! no! I own nothing except this"--she clasped her colour-box and looked up with a face of ecstacy.

"I only want this," she said, "_and this_," she continued, waving her hand with an impressive sweep which was meant to include both earth and sky.

She claimed a good deal, Nell thought; but, after all, that did not matter, as she had nothing to do with the feud.

"I'm glad you are not the owner," said Nell, "for, if you were, I should have been obliged to leave you."

"Why so?"

"I and the others have sworn it solemnly round a bonfire."

The words were so unusual that Antonia was greatly amused.

"You don't like to leave the Towers, then?" she said.

"Like it?" replied Nell. "Would you, if you had lived here ever since the tenth century?"

"Mercy, child! how venerable I'd be!" exclaimed Antonia. She smiled in quite a tragic way--it was quite a new thing to see a smile on Antonia's face.

Nell looked at her very gravely. Her own sweet grey eyes grew full of tears.