"Yes. . . . What a time I've had, Nick! If only you knew what I've been through! The responsibility and all! How has Mama been?"
"Marvellous. Renny's letter has given her a new lease of life. I wonder what prompted him to write to her instead of to Augusta."
Ernest stared, incredulously. "You don't mean that he wrote to Mama about Alayne's coming and getting the cottage ready for them?"
"He did. Right over Augusta's head. The old girl is nettled, I can tell you. And serve her right. She's too hoity-toity about here by far."
"H'm! He should not have done that. It wasn't fair to Augusta. And Mama is so helpless. What could she do?"
Nicholas gave one of his subterranean chuckles. "Do? Do? She has driven us nearly crazy. If she had had her way most of the furniture would have been carried from the house to furnish Fiddler's Hut. Things haven't been dull here! Look at her now."
Old Mrs. Whiteoak was again seated in her own chair. To protect her from draught a black and gold Indian screen had been placed at her back. On top of the screen Boney, in brilliant spring plumage, was perched, his beady eyes fixed on her cap, the gay ribbons of which intrigued him. On ottomans on either side of her she had commanded Eden and Alayne to sit. She took a hand of each. It was almost a sacramental act.
Her mind had never grasped the fact that Eden and Alayne were estranged, separated. She saw them now only as an inseparable pair who had disappeared for a long time and were now returned miraculously to her. Her activities of the past days had brightened her eyes and reset her strongly marked features in the mould of authority.
"Ha!" she ejaculated. "And so you're here! At last, eh? My young couple. Bonny as ever. Lord, what a time I've had getting ready for you! What a to-do! Eh, Augusta? A to-do, eh? Alayne, my dear, you remember my daughter, Lady Bunkley? She's fail-
