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And Tony meekly accepted the peace-offering. "You haven't smacked her," Jan remarked. Tony sighed. "It's too late now I don't feel like it any more." All the same he felt aggrieved as he set out to seek Earley in the kitchen garden. Earley was not to be found. He saw Mrs. Mumford already hanging kitchen cloths on a line in the orchard, but he felt no desire for Mrs. Mumford's society.
Now they would depend entirely on Placid and a couple of bicycles for getting about. All round the walled garden did they go, and Meg played horses with the children up and down the broad paths while Jan discussed vegetables with Earley. And last of all they went to the back door to ask Hannah for milk and scones, for the keen, fresh air had made them all hungry.
"Thank you," Jan said again; "that's quite right." "Be you feelin' the 'eat, miss?" Earley asked anxiously. "I don't think as you ought to be out without an 'at." "No, I expect not. I'll go and get one." By lunch time there was still no sign of Hugo and Tony; and Jan was certainly as much scared as even Hugo could have wished.
"All right," he said with a little sigh, and took the hand Hugo held out. "He'll be quite safe with me, Earley," Hugo said with a pleasant smile. "Miss Ross knows I'm going to take him." Nevertheless Earley went to the back door and asked Hannah to inform her mistress that "Mr. Tancred had taken Mazter Tony along of 'im."
Deary me! one would have to be old to have one's appetite and a picnic appetite at that! spoiled by three gingerbread biscuits! The sail to Earley would have been shorn of one of its chief joys without these sticky sweets. The absence of the clean, smiling old woman would have been resented as a positive crime.
It seemed to him to be wrong-headed and absurd, and he began to lose patience with her. On his last morning he sought and found her beside the sun-dial in the wrens' garden. Meg had taken little Fay to see Lady Mary's Persian kittens, but Tony preferred to potter about the garden with the aged man who was trying to replace Earley.
The ferry at Earley was an old-fashioned affair, sloping over the muddy shore to a little white pay-house with a clanky turnpike on either side. Once past these turnpikes, the visitor found himself in the midst of things with delightful suddenness. A wide green stretch of grass lay along the river bank, bordered by shady trees.
Meg drank the deliciously cold water and arose refreshed. And somehow the homely comfort of Mrs. Earley's presence made her realise wherein lay the essential difference between these two men. "He still treats me like a princess," she thought, "even though he thinks ... Oh, what can he think?" and Meg gave a little sob. "There, there!" said Mrs. Earley, "don't you take on no more, Miss.
There was no hope of getting it mended till she reached Wren's End, when Earley would do it for her. As she pushed her bicycle along the lane she recovered her sense of humour and she laughed. And presently she became aware of a faint, sweet, elusive perfume from some flowering shrub on the other side of somebody's garden wall.
Down the drive they all four ran, accompanied by a joyfully galumphing William, who was in such good spirits that he occasionally gave vent to a solemn deep-chested bark. When they came to the squat grey lodge, there was Mrs. Earley standing in her doorway to welcome them. Mrs. Earley was Earley's mother, and Earley was gardener and general factotum at Wren's End. Mrs.
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