"
All the rest of that day Francesca was angelic. She brought
footstools for Salemina, wound wool for her, insisted upon washing
my paint brushes, read aloud to us while we were working, and
offered to be the one to discharge Benella if the awful moment for
that surgical operation should ever come. Finally, just as we were
about to separate for the night, she said, with insinuating
sweetness, "You won't tell Ronald about my mistake with the rent-
money, will you, dearest and darlingest girls?"
We are now quite ready to join in all the gaieties that may ensue
when Rosnaree welcomes its master and his guests. Our page in
buttons at the lodge gives Benella full scope for her administrative
ability, which seems to have sprung into being since she entered our
service; at least, if I except that evidence of it which she
displayed in managing us when first we met. She calls our page 'the
Button Boy,' and makes his life a burden to him by taking him away
from his easy duties at the gate, covering his livery with baggy
overalls, and setting him to weed the garden. It can never, in the
nature of things, be made free from weeds during our brief term of
tenancy, but Benella cleverly keeps her slave at work on the beds
and the walks that are the most conspicuous to visitors. The Old
Hall used simply to be called 'Aunt David's house' by the Welsh
Joyces, and it was Aunt David herself who made the garden; she who
traced the lines of the flower-beds with the ivory tip of her
parasol; she who planned the quaint stone gateways and arbours and
hedge seats; she who devised the interminable stretches of paths,
the labyrinthine walks, the mazes, and the hidden flower-plots.
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