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Updated: May 8, 2025
They had been working upwards through the house, and finally Bess led the way to the top landing of all. She paused for a moment before the door of an attic room. "I expect you'll know this place!" she remarked shyly, ushering in her guest. Ingred looked round in amazement. It was a little sanctum which she and Quenrede had shared in the old days as a kind of studio.
I won't bring any middle-aged people," laughed Mother, with a sly glance at Quenrede. The party in the bluebell woods on Saturday was entirely a family one, with the exception of Mr. Broughten, who rode over on a motor-bicycle ostensibly to lend some microscopic slides to Athelstane, though Ingred suspected there was another attraction in the visit.
"I'm aiming at higher things than Rotherwood, darling boy!" said his mother gravely. "I know!" whispered Quenrede, squeezing the dear hand that reached out and clasped her own. "I won't be a selfish beast any more. I won't indeed. Economizing shall be my New Year's cross!" "If we're going to count up crosses," proclaimed Athelstane humorously, "the orphan's fine voice while I'm studying is mine!"
One glance was enough. The next second she turned, and beat a hurried and ignominious retreat to the sheltered side of the green mound. Ingred, panting in the rear, followed her to cover. Quenrede, very pink in the face, sat down on a clump of heather and immediately began to put up her hair. "I never felt such an idiot in my life!" she confided with energy to her sympathetic audience of one.
Father was dozing in the dining-room, Mother, Athelstane and Hereward were in the drawing-room, interrupting each other's reading by constant extracts from their own books; Ingred, who hated to pause in the midst of The Scarlet Pimpernel to hear choice bits from The Young Visiters or Parisian Sketches, sought sanctuary in her bedroom, only to find the blind drawn and Quenrede with a bad headache, trying to rest.
Desmond tried to look after all her guests, but several gentlemen had disappointed her at the last minute, and there were not quite partners enough to go round. At a young people's party Quenrede would have cheerily danced with some other girl in like plight, but at this stiff grown-up gathering she dared not suggest such an informality, and remained a wallflower.
Ingred drew great breaths of sweet-scented wet air, and, with almost the same instinct as the thrush, broke into "Thank God for a Garden!" the song that Mother loved to hear Quenrede sing in the evenings when the day's work was over.
It was a grievance to Quenrede that, as she expressed it, she had "missed the war." She had longed to go out to France and drive an ambulance, or to whirl over English roads on a motorcycle, buying up hay for the Government, or to assist in training horses, or to help in some other patriotic job of an equally interesting and exciting character.
We can't let all our time be frittered away by idle friends, but we can generally manage tactfully without offending them. Don't look so woe-begone, childie! Nobody else is coming to-night, and I promise you tea in the woods to-morrow." "By ourselves?" "Unless anyone very nice comes over to join us," put in Quenrede quickly. "You girls shall give the invitations.
Their conductor, with a side glance at the bunch of flowers which Quenrede ignored made some reference to the Giant King stone and his whispering companions: he was evidently well versed in all old traditions, though he refrained from mentioning local practices. He walked part of the way home with the Saxons before he branched off to the place where he had left his bicycle.
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