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The old man was not to be found, and she knocked at his half-opened door, for she needed him to fill her idle forenoon. A blue-eyed sheep-dog, a new friend, and Rambler's old enemy, crawled out and besought her to enter. Iggulden sat in his chair by the fire, a thistle-spud between his knees, his head drooped.
"SHE's the one that knows her own mind," said Pinky, brother to Skim Winsh, and a Napoleon among carters who had helped to bring the grand piano across the fields in the autumn rains. "She had ought to," said Iggulden. "Whoa, Buller! She's a Lashmar. They never was double-thinking." "Oh, you found that?
"Well, I'm " "Don't swear," said Sophie. "Bad for the infant mind." "But how in the world did she get at it? Have you ever said a word about the Lashmars?" "You know the only time to young Iggulden at Rocketts when Iggulden died." "Your great-grandmother's brother! She's traced the whole connection more than your Aunt Sydney could do. What does she mean about our keeping quiet?"
Her body failed her for a moment; she dropped beneath a hedge, and looked back at the great house. In some fashion its silence and stolidity steadied her for her errand. Mrs. Betts, small, black-eyed, and dark, was almost as unconcerned as Friars Pardon. "Yiss, yiss, of course. Dear me! Well, Iggulden he had had his day in my father's time. Muriel, get me my little blue bag, please. Yiss, ma'am.
"Black Chinese furniture and yellow silk brocade," she answered, and ran downhill. She scattered a few cows at a gap with a flourish of a ground-ash that Iggulden had cut for her a week ago, and singing as she passed under the holmoaks, sought the farm-house at the back of Friars Pardon.
The unhurried meals, the foreknowledge of deliciously empty hours to follow, the breadths of soft sky under which they walked together and reckoned time only by their hunger or thirst; the good grass beneath their feet that cheated the miles; their discoveries, always together, amid the farms Griffons, Rocketts, Burnt House, Gale Anstey, and the Home Farm, where Iggulden of the blue smock-frock would waylay them, and they would ransack the old house once more; the long wet afternoons when, they tucked up their feet on the bedroom's deep window-sill over against the apple-trees, and talked together as never till then had they found time to talk these things contented her soul, and her body throve.
Very slow to fill their houses, they are. Most like Master George won't open 'is nursery till he's thirty." "Poor lamb!" cried Sophie. "But how did you know my folk were Lashmars?" Mrs. Cloke thought deeply. "I'm sure I can't quite say, ma'am, but I've a belief likely that it was something you may have let drop to young Iggulden when you was at Rocketts. That may have been what give us an inkling.
The past four months had taught George better than to reply. The carriage road winding up the hill was his present keen interest. They set off to look at it, and the imported American scraper which had blighted the none too sunny soul of "Skim" Winsh, the carter. But young Iggulden was in charge now, and under his guidance, Buller and Roberts, the great horses, moved mountains.
Has the answer come from your uncle?" said Skim, doubtful whether so remote a land as America had posts. The others looked at him scornfully. Skim was always a day behind the fair. Iggulden rested from his labours. "She's a Lashmar right enough. I started up to write to my uncle at once the month after she said her folks came from Veering Holler." "Where there ain't any roads?"
Against her will she fell to wondering how many Moones, Elphicks, and Torrells had been swung round the turn of the broad Mall stairs. Then she remembered the old man's talk of being "up-ended like a milk-can," and buried her face on Scottie's neck. "He's dead," she said, without preface. "Old Iggulden? I was coming for a talk with him." The vicar passed in uncovered. "Ah!" she heard him say.
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