"Small blame to you with feather pillows and best Whitney blankets!
And as for money--we shall have to tip these people. I suppose half-a-crown will do----"
"Ahem," replied Ned somewhat doubtfully; "but it was beastly late, you know."
"Very; but that wasn't our doing: they were up with the 'hi'fer.'
However, let's put it at three shillings."
"But, my dear fellow, consider the beefsteak pie--it was simply the best pie----"
"Charge it to appetite," said Ted, rising ready dressed, supple, clean, and strong. "Three shillings is ample. Come along if you're ready, and let us get off. I'm keen to start."
He looked it; but the starting was not so easy, for though on trial the door of the cottage was found to be on the latch only, no one could be made to hear.
"Let's leave the tip on the table," suggested Ted impatiently.
"My dear fellow," replied Ned, "I won't go without seeing the 'General,' and thanking her for that excellent pie. Besides--think how she simply scooped us up last night like half-drowned kittens and set us going again! I tell you, sir, that if--it being Saturday night--she had suggested washing my head, I'd have submitted meekly, as I used with old nurse. Why! I dreamt about frilled drawers all last night!"
Ted was irresponsive; a word had arrested his attention. "Saturday!"
he echoed thoughtfully, "then to-day is Sunday!"
"First Sunday after Whitsun--No! Trinity Sunday, of course, the shortest night in the year and Midsummer Night's Dream all combined.
How time flies...."
"What luck!" gloomed Ted. "I shouldn't wonder if the smith were to refuse us our cycles--they are like that in these wild parts--what beastly bad luck!"
Here Ned, who had been prospecting at the back of the passage, opened a door, suspecting it to be possibly a coal-cellar; but he fell back from the sudden blaze of almost blinding sunlight which poured in from a long, low, absolutely empty room, which stretched away on either side over boards scrubbed to whiteness to a wide oriel window.
At that on the left-hand side stood a parrot-perch, beside which was a tall girl in blue engaged in making a white cockatoo with a yellow crest talk.
"Gimme a sixpence," it muttered hurriedly as the bit of banana turned away with the girl at the interruption.
So for a second or two they stood; the two young men smitten helpless by the extreme beauty of that girlish figure, framed as it was by the great sprays of white June clematis and great trusses of scarlet ivy geranium from the garden beyond the window.
"Gimme a sixpence, gimme a sixpence," reiterated the cockatoo in guttural allurement. Then the girl smiled.
"You must have been very wet last night, I'm afraid," she said in an absolutely perfect voice, true, pure, sweet; the real voice of the siren, which none who hear forget.
The two at the door, who stood bare-headed, almost doubting the evidence of their own eyes, gave an audible sigh of relief. This was no vision then, this beauty of womanhood pure, and simple, with softly smiling eyes.
And yet? They glanced at each other doubtfully, and the three shillings in Ted's palm seemed suddenly to become hot and scorch him.
Impossible to offer three shillings to perfection!
"Thank you, yes--I mean no--I mean that we were wet, quite wet--but now thanks to the kindness of your----" Ned paused. Much as he admired "the General," he could not affiliate to her this radiant creature.
Ted, becoming conscious vaguely that here was something new to him, something which held possible danger to his outlook in life, remembered his hurry and came to the point.
"We are very much obliged, and so, if you please, as we are about to start, we should like--I mean if you----"
Here absolute terror lest Ted should really offer those three shillings to the glorious creature in the first flush of a womanhood which seemed to Ned to be worth the whole world, made him step forward, holding out a shining sovereign.
"We've really been most awfully comfortable," he said apologetically, "and if you--if you wouldn't mind giving this----"
"Why!" she exclaimed, all eagerness, snatching at the coin, "I believe it's a sovereign! Fancy that! A whole sovereign!"
Ned felt outraged at her indecent haste; and at the back of Ted's brain lay an instant regret concerning the three shillings; he would then only have been responsible for one and sixpence instead of ten shillings.
Suddenly she held the coin up to the window, laughed--a rippling laugh like running water--and handed it back again. "Thanks for letting me see it; I hadn't seen one before, but, as grandfather says, it blocks the sunlight just like a penny!"
"You--you hadn't seen a sovereign!" said Ned feebly.
She shook her head. "We don't have money in this house. Grandfather doesn't hold with it."
"Not hold with it!" echoed Ted argumentatively. "But you must--you must pay your debts; and we want to pay ours."
Her face grew serious. "Ah! you want to pay something. That's Martha's business. Here! Martha! These gentlemen want to pay you a sovereign."
At an inner door the figure of "the General" appeared with floury arms and her prim bob curtsey.
"Hope the hi'fer didn't disturb of you, gentlemen," she said cheerfully; "but really there ain't nothing owin', let alone a sovereign's worth."
"But there must be something; and we tried to find you before, but you were asleep," protested Ned in an aggrieved tone.
"Asleep! Lord save us!" laughed Martha. "Why! Adam bein' that sound after the calvin', I was over to the loft myself three times afore I come in to my stove. But there ain't nothin'. The yay was 'ome grown, and welcome, seeing 'twas but beddin' stuff at best, and none spoilt for use by humans sleepin' on it." A faint chuckle showed her sense of superiority.
"But there was the beefsteak pie," began Ned.
Martha's giggle increased. "'Twouldn't never 'ave kep' sweet over Sunday, sir, so the pigs 'ud 'ave 'ad it if you gentlemen 'adn't."
That was an unanswerable argument.
"Will you please take it back," said the girl imperiously, holding the gold out in the easy clasp of her finger and thumb.
"But there was the tea--and the pillows and the blankets," protested Ted severely.
She turned on him swiftly. "Don't you hear Martha doesn't want it, and I don't want it. So if you don't want it also, we'd better give it to Cockatua, for I'm tired of holding it. Here, Cockatua, is a golden sovereign for you."
The bird's great yellow crest rose with greed as it grabbed at the prize, but fell again at its first hasty bite. The beady black eyes showed distrust; it turned the coin round, and bit at it again; then again. Finally, with a guttural murmur of "Gimme a sixpence," it dropped the sovereign deliberately into its bread and milk tin.
Every one laughed, Martha, however, checking herself with a hasty "Drat them scones; they'll be burnt as black as the back o' the grate," and disappearing whence she came, her voice calling back in warning to Miss Aura, not to forget the master's message.
"Aura?" questioned Ned quickly. "That's not a very appropriate----"
"My name is Aurelia," she said quite frankly, "and the message is that grandfather would like you to breakfast with him. I think you had better," she added still more frankly, "for you mightn't get anything in the village. It's Sunday, you know."
They glanced at each other mechanically, though each had decided to accept the invitation. So she led them through the kitchen, where Martha was bustling about over her stove, into a hall. This further house had evidently been joined on to the back of the cottage by the long room in which the cockatoo lived.
"We breakfast in the verandah," said Aurelia, turning to the left into a large low-roofed room, lined from floor to ceiling with books, but containing no other furniture save a chair and a writing-table.