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"Yes, sure enough, she's at home. She don't dare stir out much, 'cause of them Lupexes. Ain't this a pretty game? No dinner and no nothink! Them boxes is Miss Spruce's. She's agoing now, this minute. You'll find 'em all upstairs in the drawen-room."
Spruce's own too-talkative tongue that this offending name owed its origin. Quietly entering the peaceful chamber with its harmless and almost holy air of beautiful, darkened calm, Maryllia drew up the blinds, threw back the curtains, and opened the latticed windows wide, admitting a flood of sunshine and sweet air.
Lord love ye! it's a great thing to fetch the passon at once when there's anything a bit wrong. So, if you'd step up, sir? Driven almost to despair, Walden put his lips close to the old man's obstinate ear. "Yes," he bellowed "af-ter lun-cheon! Yes! Ye-es!" His reply at last penetrated the closed auricular doors of Spruce's brain.
Spruce's husband, a large, lumbering, simple- faced old fellow, in a brown jacket and corduroys, had himself come with the message, and having delivered it, stood on Walden's threshold, cap in hand, waiting for a reply. John surveyed his awkward, peasant-like figure with a sense of helplessness, excuses and explanations he knew would be utterly lost on an almost deaf man.
Ay, it was an awsome visitation of the Lord! Often when the wind goes wimblin' through the pines near the house I think I 'ear her shriek now, ay, sir! it was like the cry of somethin' as was havin' its heart tore out!" Walden stood very silent, listening. This narrative was new to him, and even Mrs. Spruce's manner of relating it was not without a certain rough eloquence.
The roots of this tree were only a few feet from the edge of the steep gravelly bank, and this, together with a furious gale, had been the cause of the spruce's fall. Between two of the perpendicular roots, which were partly embedded in the ground, was a large hole, before which Gyp was making all the fuss.
Spruce's account, the man I met this morning the quizzical parson with the grey-brown curly-locks, did it all at his own expense he must really be quite clever, such an unusual thing for a country clergyman!" She took another observant survey of the whole building, and then went out again into the churchyard.
"Tell him, please," said Maryllia, still addressing Bainton, "that he is to meet the agent as arranged at the appointed place to-morrow morning; but that he is not to take any ropes or axes or any men with him. He is simply to say that by Miss Vancourt's orders the trees are not to be touched." These words Bainton dutifully bellowed into Spruce's semi-closed organs of hearing.
And nodding darkly as one who could say much an' she would, the worthy woman ambled away. Scraps of information, such as this talk of Mrs. Spruce's, reached Bainton's ears from time to time in a disjointed and desultory manner and moved him to profound cogitation. He was not quite sure now whether, after all, his liking for Miss Vancourt had not been greatly misplaced.
Yet there was a touch of old-world tragedy in Mrs. Spruce's modern history of the young girl's shriek when she found herself suddenly fatherless on that fatal hunting morning. "And now," continued Mrs. Spruce, coaxing one bonnet-string at a time off each portly shoulder with considerable difficulty; "I s'pose I must be goin', Passon Walden, and thank you kindly for all!
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