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Updated: June 9, 2025
Sad was it for Bessie and all the junior Wendovers when the seventh of September dawned with gray skies, or east winds, rain, or hail. It was usually a brilliant day. The clerk of the weather appeared favourably disposed to the warm-hearted Bessie. On this particular occasion the preparations for the festival were on a grander scale than usual, in honour of Ida, who was on the eve of departure.
I should say from the last accounts that he was breaking. 'He had a mysterious attack of illness just before I left' said Robert gravely. 'It made one anxious. 'Oh, it is the old story. All the Wendovers have died of weak hearts or queer brains generally of both together. I imagine you had some experience of the Squire's queerness at one time, Mr. Elsmere.
Ida started early one heavenly midsummer morning, with her book and her luncheon in a little basket, to see the old lodge-keeper at Wendover Abbey, who had nursed the elder Wendovers when they were babies in the nurseries at the Abbey, and who had lived in a Gothic cottage at the gate built on purpose for her by the last squire ever since her retirement from active service.
But he made a great effort, and he has come all the way as fast as he could tear to be here on Bessie's birthday. Isn't it too jolly? 'All the way from Norway? asked Ida. 'Yes, said Urania, who had been carried down the hill with the torrent of Wendovers, 'all the way from Norway. Isn't it nice of him? Blanche's frank face was brimming over with smiles. The boys were all laughing.
She's going in the jaunting-car, said Reginald, talking of the lady as if she were a horse. 'We're going to take her over to the Abbey. The Abbey was the ancestral home of the Wendovers, now in possession of Brian Wendover, only son of the Colonel's eldest brother, and head of the house. 'Well, don't upset her oftener than you can help, replied the father.
They were going upward, to the hilly region between Kingthorpe and Winchester, to a spot where there was a table-shaped edifice of stones, supposed to be of Druidic origin. The young Wendovers were profoundly indifferent to the Druids, and to that hypothetical race who lived ages before the Druids, and have broken out all over the earth in stony excrescences, as yet vaguely classified.
He missed you, sir, when you went away. Not that he'd say a word, but he moped. His books didn't seem to please him, nor anything else. I've just broke my heart over him this last year. There was silence a moment in the big room, hung round with the shapes of bygone Wendovers. The opiate had taken effect. The Squire's countenance was no longer convulsed.
Ida knew no more of Sir Tristram's history than that he had been a brave soldier and a faithful servant of the Stuarts in evil and good fortune; that he had married somewhat late in life, to become the father of an only son, from whom the present race of Wendovers were descended.
The rain came and went in fitful showers, the wind blustered a little, and then died away in sobs, while the young Wendovers spent their morning noisily and excitedly, in laborious industries of the most frivolous kind, the end and aim of which was to make a gorgeous display in the evening.
'That might have made it still more interesting, admitted Ida, with a frankness which took the sting out of Miss Rylance's remark. The young Wendovers had shown Ida everything.
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