to take me through the gardens and show me things?"

Yes, he could do it. In truth, he privately welcomed an opportunity
offering a prospect of excitement so novel. He had shown more
flourishing gardens to other young ladies in his past years of service,
but young ladies did not come to Stornham, and that one having, with
such extraordinary unexpectedness arrived, should want to look over the
desolation of these, was curious enough to rouse anyone to a sense of
a break in accustomed monotony. The young lady herself mystified him
by her difference from such others as he had seen. What the man in the
shabby livery had felt, he felt also, and added to this was a sense of
the practicalness of the questions she asked and the interest she showed
and a way she had of seeming singularly to suggest by the look in her
eyes and the tone of her voice that nothing was necessarily without
remedy. When her ladyship walked through the place and looked at things,
a pale resignation expressed itself in the very droop of her
figure. When this one walked through the tumbled-down grape-houses,
potting-sheds and conservatories, she saw where glass was broken, where
benches had fallen and where roofs sagged and leaked. She inquired about
the heating apparatus and asked that she might see it. She asked about
the village and its resources, about labourers and their wages.

"As if," commented Kedgers mentally, "she was what Sir Nigel
is--leastways what he'd ought to be an' ain't."

She led the way back to the fallen wall and stood and looked at it.

"It's a beautiful old wall," she said. "It should be rebuilt with the
old brick. New would spoil it."

"Some of this is broken and crumbled away," said Kedgers, picking up a
piece to show it to her.

"Perhaps old brick could be bought somewhere," replied the young lady
speculatively. "One ought to be able to buy old brick in England, if one
is willing to pay for it."

Kedgers scratched his head and gazed at her in respectful wonder which
was almost trouble. Who was going to pay for things, and who was going
to look for things which were not on the spot? Enterprise like this was
not to be explained.

When she left him he stood and watched her upright figure disappear
through the ivy-grown door of the kitchen gardens with a disturbed
but elated expression on his countenance. He did not know why he felt
elated, but he was conscious of elation. Something new had walked
into the place. He stoppe