"Where would you propose that I should take her?" Mr Ffolliot asked, fixing his monocle and staring steadily at his mother-in-law.

"To tell you the truth, Hilary, I don't propose that _you_ should take her anywhere. What I propose is that her father and I should take her to Cannes with us a week to-day."

"To Cannes," Mr Ffolliot gasped, "in a week. I don't believe she could stand the journey."

"Oh yes, she could. Her father will see that she does it as comfortably as possible, and I shall take Adele, who can look after both of us. We'll stay a night in Paris, and at Avignon if Margie shows signs of being very tired. You must understand that Margie will go as our guest."

Mr Ffolliot dropped his monocle and leant back in his chair. "It is most kind of you and the General," he said politely, "but I doubt very much if she can be persuaded to go."

"Oh she's going," Mrs Grantly said easily, while Mary, with scarlet cheeks, looked at her plate, knowing well that the subject had never been so much as touched upon to her mother. "You see, Hilary, she has had a good deal of Redmarley, and the children and you, during the last twenty years, and it will do her all the good in the world to get away from you all for a bit. Don't you agree with me, Mary?"

Mary lifted her downcast eyes and looked straight at her father. "The doctor says it's mother's only chance of getting really strong," she said boldly, "to get right away from all of us."

"You, my dear Hilary," Mrs Grantly continued in the honeyed tones her family had long ago learnt to recognise as the precursor of verbal castigation for somebody, "would not be the agreeable and well-informed person you are, did you not go away by yourself for a fairly long time during every year. I don't think you have missed once since Grantly was born. How often has Margie been away by herself, even for a couple of nights?"

"Margie has never expressed the slightest wish to go away," Mr Ffolliot said reproachfully. "I have often deplored her extreme devotion to her children."

"Somebody had to be devoted to her children," said Mrs Grantly.

Mr Ffolliot ignored this thrust, saying haughtily, "Since I understand that this has all been settled without consulting me, I cannot see that any good purpose can be served in further discussion of the arrangement now," and he rose preparatory to departure.

"Wait, Hilary," Mrs Grantly rose too. "I don't think you quite understand that the smallest objection on your part to Margie would at once render the whole project hopeless. What you've got to do is to smile broadly upon the scheme----"

Here Mary gasped, the "broad smile" of the Squire upon anything or anybody being beyond her powers of imagination.

"Otherwise," Mrs Grantly paused to frown at Mary, who softly vanished from the room, "you may have Margie on your hands as an invalid for several months, and I don't think you'd like that."

"But who," Mr Ffolliot demanded, "will look after things while she's away?"

"Why you and Mary, to be sure. My dear Hilary," Mrs Grantly said sweetly, "a change is good for all of us, and it will be wholesome for you to take the reins into your own hands for a bit. I confess I've often wondered how you could so meekly surrender the whole management of this big place to Margie. It's time you a.s.serted yourself a little."

Mr Ffolliot stared gloomily at Mrs Grantly, who smiled at him in the friendliest fashion. "You see," she went on, "you are, if I may say so, a little un.o.bservant, or you would perhaps have personally investigated what made Ger, an otherwise quite normally intelligent child, so very stupid over his poor little lessons."

"I've always left everything of that sort to his mother."

"I know you have--but do you think it was quite fair? And for a long time Margie has been looking thin and f.a.gged. Her father was most concerned about it at Christmas--but I never heard you remark upon it."

"She never complains," Mr Ffolliot said feebly.

"Complains," Mrs Grantly repeated scornfully. "We're not a complaining family. But I should have thought _you_ with your strong love of the beautiful would at least have remarked how she has gone off in looks."

"She hasn't," said Mr Ffolliot with some heat.

"She looks her age, every day of it," Mrs Grantly persisted. "When we bring her back she'll look like Mary's sister!"

"How long do you propose to be away?"

"Oh, three weeks or a month; at the most a fortnight less than you have had every year for nineteen years."

Mr Ffolliot made no answer; he took out his cigarette case and lit a cigarette with hands that were not quite steady.

"You quite understand then, Hilary, that you are to put the whole weight of your authority into the scale that holds France for Margie?"

"I thought you said it was settled?"

"My dear man, you know what a goose she is; if she thought you hated it, nothing would induce her to go--you _must_ consider her for once."

"I really must protest," Mr Ffolliot said stiffly, "against your gratuitous a.s.sumption that _I_ care nothing for Margie's welfare."

"Not at all," Mrs Grantly said smoothly, "I only ask for a modest manifestation of your devotion, that's all."

"Shall I go to her now?" said Mr Ffolliot with the air of a lamb led to the slaughter.

"Certainly not--she'll probably be trying to get up lest you should want her for anything. _I'll_ go and keep her in bed till luncheon.

You may come and see her at eleven."

When Fusby came in for the breakfast tray, Mr Ffolliot was still standing on the hearth-rug immersed in thought.

CHAPTER XIX

MARY AND HER FATHER

In the lives of even the strongest and most competent among us, there will arise moments when decision of any kind has become impossible, and it is a real relief to have those about us who settle everything without asking whether we like it or not. Such times are almost always the result of physical debility, when the enfeebled body so reacts upon brain and spirit that no matter how vigorous the one or valorous the other, both seem atrophied.

It is at such times that we have cause to bless the doctor who is a strong man, and fears not to give orders or talk straight talk; and the relations who never so much as mention any plan till it has been decided, taking for granted we will approve the arrangements they have made.

We are generally acquiescent, for it is so blessed to drift pa.s.sively in the wake of these determined ones, till such time as, with returning physical strength, the will a.s.serts itself once more.

Thus it fell out that Mrs Ffolliot was surprisingly submissive when she was told by the doctor, a plain-spoken country doctor, who did not mince his words, that she must seize the chance offered of going to the South of France with her parents, or he wouldn't answer for the consequences.

"You are," he said, "looking yellow and dowdy, and you are feeling blue and hysterical; if you don't go away at once you'll go on doing both for an interminable time."

Mrs Ffolliot laughed. "Then I suppose for the sake of the rest of the family I ought to go"--and she went.

If Mr Ffolliot did not take Mrs Grantly's advice and look after things himself, he certainly was forced to attend to a good many tiresome details in the management of things outside the Manor House than had ever fallen to his lot before. Mary saved him all she could, but Willets and Heaven and Fusby seemed to take a malicious delight in consulting him about trivial things that he found himself quite unable to decide one way or other.

At first he tried to put them off with "Ask Miss Mary," but Willets shook his head, smiled kindly, and said firmly, "Twouldn't be fair, sir, 'twouldn't really."

Ger and the Kitten had never seemed so tiresome and ubiquitous before, coming across his path at every turn; and Ger certainly nullified any uneasiness on the Squire's part regarding his eyes by practising, in and out of season, upon a discarded bugle. A bugle bought for him by one of his friends in the Royal 'Orse for the sum of three and ninepence. Ger had ama.s.sed three shillings of this sum, and the good-natured gunner never mentioned the extra ninepence.

Ger had a quick ear and could already pick out little tunes on the piano with one finger, though, so far, he had found musical notation as difficult as every other kind of reading.

But he took to the bugle like a duck to water, and on an evil day someone in Woolwich had taught him the peace call, "Come to the Cookhouse Door."

The inhabitants of Redmarley were summoned to the cook-house door from every part of the village, from the woods, from the riverside, and from the churchyard.