Then mamma went off to write some letters and I to the schoolroom to practise, which had to be done, holidays or no holidays!

'I wonder if we shall have a piano at the hut,' I thought. 'I shan't very much mind if we don't,' for at that time I did not care much for music, not, at least, for my own performances. Since then I have come to 'appreciate' it a little better, though I am not at all clever about it, and I am afraid papa and mamma are rather disappointed at this. But Esme is learning the violin and plays already so well that I hope she will make up for me.

I kept running to the window--the schoolroom overlooks the drive--every time I heard the sound of wheels, to see if it was papa and Geordie coming back, which was very silly, as of course they would have a good deal to do, measuring and seeing the carpenter and arranging it all. But I felt as if I could not settle to anything till I knew about the iron room, as it did seem as if the whole plan depended a good deal on our getting it. And when at last I did catch sight of the dogcart coming swiftly along the avenue, my heart began to beat so fast that I had to stop once or twice to take breath on my way to the hall-door.

Mamma was there before me, as anxious as I, I do believe, though she was too sensible to show it.

But before they got to the house, we knew it was all right. Geordie stood up in the cart and waved his cap for us to understand.

'Oh, I am so glad!' I cried, and mamma smiled.

How strangely things change their--oh, dear, I can't find just the right word; yes, I have it now 'aspects'--in life sometimes. This was Monday; on Sat.u.r.day only had we heard _the_ sad news, and here we were, quite in good, almost high spirits again, about a little bettering of what, if we had foreseen it a week ago, we should certainly have thought a cloud with no silver lining!

Papa and Dods jumped down in a moment, and threw the reins to the groom.

'Is it----' I began.

'All right,' papa interrupted. 'Lloyd is delighted. Very kind and sympathising, of course, with us, but so interested in our--I should say,' with a smile to me, 'Ida's scheme. He thinks it a first-rate idea, at any rate till the autumn.'

'And he is coming up himself this afternoon,' said Geordie, 'with the drawings and measures of the room, that he got when he bought it.'

'Very good of him,' said mamma.

'And Jervis, the carpenter, is coming too,' George went on; 'and we must all go down to the hut together. Mr. Lloyd said _particularly_ Ida.'

I felt myself grow red with pleasure.

'Yes,' said papa; 'we must all go and give our opinions. I am very glad to have secured the room. They were already beginning to take it down.

It is a very good size really, larger than you would think; and there are two doorways, I am glad to find, and a little porch. I have two or three ideas in my head as to how to join it on and so forth, but I can go into them better on the spot.'

'Ida and I have been busy too,' said mamma. 'Really, Jack, you would scarcely believe the amount of extra furniture we have. There will be very little to buy--only, I do believe, one camp bedstead for Geordie, and perhaps a servant's one; and a few bright, warm-looking rugs.'

'_We_ might buy those, mamma,' I interrupted eagerly. 'I have told mamma about our sixteen and sixpence, Doddie,' I went on, turning to George. 'I knew you wouldn't mind.'

Geordie nodded.

'Sixteen and sixpence,' repeated papa. 'How have you managed to get together all that?'

'It's _hut_ money,' I replied. 'I mean it's on purpose to spend on the hut. We have other savings, too, for Christmas and birthdays--this is all for the hut.'

'And it shall be spent on the hut,' said papa, 'on something lasting--to do honour to you both.'

Wasn't that nice of him?

CHAPTER V

'WHAT _CAN_ SHE MEAN?'

I remember that Monday afternoon so well. It was very interesting. Mr.

Lloyd was very kind and clever about things, and the carpenter, though a rather slow, very silent man, understood his business and was quite ready to do all that was wanted. Papa was as eager as a boy, and Geordie full of ideas too. So between us we got it beautifully planned.

It was far nicer than I had dared to hope. They fixed to run a tiny pa.s.sage between the side of the hut where the room was to be placed, so that the two doorways into it could both be used,--one to enter into Geordie's room, so that he could run in and out without having to go through mamma's or ours, and the other leading into mamma's, from which we could pa.s.s to ours. And the part.i.tions made them really as good as three proper rooms, each with a nice window. There could be no fireplace in ours, but as it was the middle one, and therefore sure to be the warmest, that would not matter, as there were two, one at each end in the iron room. If it was very cold, mamma said Esme and I might undress in hers, and _dress_ in his, Geordie added, as he meant always to be up very early and light his own fire to work by, which rather amused us all, as he was _not_ famed for early rising. Indeed, I never knew such a sleepy head as he was--poor old Dods!

We felt satisfied, as we walked home, that we had done a good day's work.

'Though it _couldn't_ have been managed without the iron room,' Geordie and I agreed.

And a day or two later we felt still more settled and pleased when mamma told us that Hoskins and Margery were coming with us. Hoskins was just a little melancholy about it all, not a bit for herself, I do believe, but because she thought it would be 'such a change, so different' for mamma and us.

She cheered up however when we reminded her how much nicer it would be than a poky little house in a back street at Kirke, or, worse still, away in some other place altogether, among strangers. And when she said something about the cold, in case we stayed at the hut through the winter, Geordie said we could afford plenty of fires as we should have no rent to pay, and that _he_ was going to be 'stoker' for the whole family.

'You won't need to look after any fire but your own, Master George,'

said she, 'and not that, unless it amuses you. Margery is not a lazy girl--I would not own her for my niece if she was. And besides that, there will be Barnes to help to carry in the coal.'

Barnes was one of the under-gardeners. He lived with his father and mother at the Lodge, but he had never had anything to do with the house, so I was surprised at what Hoskins said.

'Oh yes,' George explained, looking very business-like and nodding in a way he had, 'that is one of the things papa and I have settled about. We are rigging up a room for Barnes, much nearer than the Lodge--the old woodman's hut within a stone's throw of _our_ hut, Ida, so that a whistle would bring him in a moment. He will still live at the Lodge for eating, you see, but he will come round first thing and last thing. He's as proud as a peac.o.c.k; he thinks he's going to be a kind of Robinson Crusoe; it will be quite a nice little room; there is even a fireplace in it. He says he won't need coals; there's such lots of brushwood about.'

'_I_ have been thinking of that,' I said eagerly. 'It would seem much more in keeping to burn brushwood than commonplace coals----'

'Except in my kitchen, if you please, Miss Ida,' put in Hoskins.

'And better still than brushwood,' I went on, taking no notice of Hoskins's 'kitchen,'--I would much rather have had a gypsy fire with a pot hanging on three iron rods, the way gypsies do, or are supposed to do,--'better than brushwood, fir cones. They do smell so delicious when they are burning. We might make a great heap of them before next winter.

It would give the children something to do when they are playing in the wood.'

[Ill.u.s.tration: ORDERING DENZIL ABOUT AS USUAL.]

They--the two little ones--were of course in tremendous spirits about the whole thing,--such spirits that they could not even look sad for very long when at last--about three weeks after the days I have just been describing--the sorrowful morning arrived on which dear papa had to leave us. Esme cried loudly, as was her way; Denzil, more silently and solemnly, as was his; but an hour or two afterwards we heard the little b.u.t.terfly laughing outside in the garden and ordering Denzil about as usual.

'Never mind,' said mamma, glancing up from the lists of all sorts of things she was already busy at and reading what was in my mind, 'rather let us be glad that the child does not realise it. She is very young; it does not mean that she is heartless,' and mamma herself choked down her tears and turned again to her writing-table.

I too had done my best not to cry, though it was _very_ difficult. I think George and I 'realised' it all--the long, lonely voyage for papa; the risks at sea which are always there; the dangers for his health, for the climate was a bad one, and it was not the safest season by any means. All these, and then the possibility of great disappointment when he got there--of finding that, after all, the discovery of things going wrong had come too late to put them right, and of all that would follow this--the leaving our dear, dear home, not for a few months, or even a year, but for _always_.

It would not do even to think of it. And I had promised papa to be brave and cheerful.

By this time I must explain that the Hut--from now I must write it with a capital, as mamma did in her letters: 'The Hut, Eastercove' looked quite grand, we thought--was ready for us to move into. Our tenants were expected at the house in a week or ten days, and we were now to leave it as soon as we could.

A great part of the arranging, carting down furniture, and so on had been done, but it had been thought better to put off our actually taking up our quarters in our quaint new home till after papa had gone. _He_ said it would have worried him rather if we had left sooner, but I know the truth was, that he thought the having to be very busy, in a bustle in fact, at once on his going, would be the best for us all--mamma especially.

And a bustle it was, though things had been hurried on wonderfully fast.

The fixing up of the iron room was quite complete and the part.i.tions were already in their places, the furniture roughly in the rooms too.

But as everybody who has ever moved from one house to another knows, there were still _heaps_ to be done, and seen to by ourselves, which no work-people could do properly. And besides the arranging at the Hut of course, there was a great deal for mamma to settle at the house, so as to leave everything nice for the people who were coming.

That afternoon, I remember, the afternoon of the day papa left, we were at the Hut till dark, working as hard as we could, even the little ones helping, by running messages and fetching and carrying. And by the time we went home we were very tired and beginning to find it very difficult to look on the bright side of things.