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Updated: May 26, 2025
The musician nodded. "Grown-ups might possibly envy the freedom of speech permitted to childhood," he said quietly. Then, still more quietly: "'Fairy Lady, you are so beautiful!" "But you're not a child, so don't poach Coppertop's preserves!" retorted Magda swiftly. "Let's get to work, Antoine. I'll just change into my practice-kit and then I want to run through the 'Swan-Maiden's' dance.
"Your type is never harmless, my dear. Unless you fall in love, you'll be an unexploded mine till the day of your death." "That nearly occurred to-day, by the way," vouchsafed Magda tranquilly. "In which case," smiling "you'd have been spared any further anxiety on Coppertop's account." "What do you mean?" demanded Gillian, startled. "I mean that I've had an adventure this afternoon.
Often during these tranquil summer days the two were to be found together, Magda recounting the most gorgeous stories of knights and dragons such as Coppertop's small soul delighted in. On one such occasion, at the end of a particularly thrilling narrative, he sat back on his heels and regarded her with a certain wistful anxiety.
And then the car slid away and Magda's last glimpse was of the open gates of Friars' Holm with its old-world garden, stately and formal, in the background; and of Virginie weeping unrestrainedly, her snowy apron flung up over her head; and of Gillian standing erect, her brown eyes very wide and winking away the tears that welled up despite herself, and her hand on Coppertop's small manful shoulder, gripping it hard.
Coppertop's excited voice, shrilling across the garden as he came racing over the grass, put an abrupt end to a scene that was threatening to develop along the familiar tempestuous lines dictated by Antoine's temperament. The child's advent was somewhat differently received by Magda with unmixed relief, by Antoine with a baulked gesture of annoyance.
Nor did a forlorn Coppertop's reiterated inquiries as to how soon the Fairy Lady might be expected back again help to mend matters. Lady Arabella's grief was expressed in a characteristically prickly fashion. "Young people don't seem to know the first thing about love nowadays," she observed with the customary scathing contempt of one age for another. In my young days!
Almost she wished they had never come to Stockleigh, only that it was pure joy to her to see Coppertop's rather thin little cheeks filling out and growing sunburnt and rosy. He had not picked up strength very readily after his attack of croup, and subsequently the intense heat in London had tried him a good deal.
It was Honeycott who lifted Coppertop on to the broad back of the steadiest cart-horse; who had taught him how to feed calves by dipping his chubby little hand into a pail of milk and then letting them suck the milk from off his fingers; who beneficently contrived that hardly a load of hay was driven to the great rick without Coppertop's small person perched proudly aloft thereon, his slim legs dangling and his shrill voice joining with that of the carter in an encouraging "Come-up, Blossom," to the bay mare as she plodded forward between the shafts.
Gillian experienced no anxiety with regard to Coppertop's safety while he was in Ned Honeycott's charge, but she missed the childish companionship, the more so as she found herself frequently alone these days. June Storran was naturally occupied about her house and dairy, while Magda, under Dan Storran's tutelage, appeared smitten with an extraordinary interest in farm management.
Gillian was sitting alone in the yew-hedged garden, her slim fingers busy repairing the holes which appeared with unfailing regularity in the heels of Coppertop's stockings.
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