“And if all these fat pigs of Senators,” they said, “were set running like that a little oftener, why, then, they’d make better bacon!”
Master Ambrose had to work the knocker of the Academy door very hard before it was finally opened by Miss Primrose herself.
She looked flustered, and, as it seemed to Master Ambrose, a little dissipated, her face was so pasty and her eyelids so very red.
“Now, Miss Crabapple!” he cried in a voice of thunder, “What, by the Harvest of Souls, have you been doing to my daughter, Moonlove? And if she’s been ill, why have we not been told, I should like to know? I’ve come here for an explanation, and I mean to get it.”
Miss Primrose, mopping and mowing, and garrulously inarticulate, took the fuming gentleman into the parlour. But he could get nothing out of her further than disjointed murmurs about the need for cooling draughts, and the child’s being rather headstrong, and a possible touch of the sun. It was clear that she was scared out of her wits, and, moreover, there was something she wished to conceal.
Master Ambrose, from his experience on the Bench, soon realized that this was a type of witness upon whom it was useless to waste his time; so he said sternly, “You are evidently unable to talk sense yourself, but perhaps some of your pupils possess that useful accomplishment. But I warn you if … if anything happens to my daughter it is you that will be held responsible. And now, send … let me see … send me down Prunella Chanticleer, she’s always been a sensible girl with a head on her shoulders. She’ll be able to tell me what exactly is the matter with Moonlove—which is more than you seem able to do.”
Miss Primrose, now almost gibbering with terror, stammered out something about “study hours,” and “regularity being so desirable,” and “dear Prunella’s having been a little out of sorts herself recently.”
But Master Ambrose repeated in a voice of thunder, “Send me Prunella Chanticleer, at once.”
And standing there, stern and square, he was a rather formidable figure.
So Miss Primrose could only gibber and blink her acquiescence and promise him that “dear Prunella” should instantly be sent to him.
When she had left him, Master Ambrose paced impatiently up and down, frowning heavily, and occasionally shaking his head.
Then he stood stock-still, in deep thought. Absently, he picked up from the worktable a canvas shoe, in process of being embroidered with wools of various brilliant shades.
At first, he stared at it with unseeing eyes.
Then, the surface of his mind began to take stock of the object. Its half finished design consisted of what looked like wild strawberries, only the berries were purple instead of red.
It was certainly very well done. There was no doubt but that Miss Primrose was a most accomplished needlewoman.
“But what’s the good of needlework? It doesn’t teach one common sense,” he muttered impatiently.
“And how like a woman!” he added with a contemptuous little snort, “Aren’t red strawberries good enough for her? Trying to improve on nature with her stupid fancies and her purple strawberries!”
But he was in no mood for wasting his time and attention on a half-embroidered slipper, and tossing it impatiently away he was about to march out of the room and call loudly for Prunella Chanticleer, when the door opened and in she came.
Had a stranger wanted to see an upper class maiden of Lud-in-the-Mist, he would have found a typical specimen in Prunella Chanticleer.
She was fair, and plump, and dimpled; and, as in the case of her mother, the ruthless common sense of her ancestors of the revolution had been trivialized, though not softened, into an equally ruthless sense of humour.
Such had been Prunella Chanticleer.
But, as she now walked into the room, Master Ambrose exclaimed to himself, “Toasted cheese! How plain the girl has grown!”
But that was a mere matter of taste; some people might have thought her much prettier than she had ever been before. She was certainly less plump than she used to be, and paler. But it was the change in the expression of her eyes that was most noticeable.
Hitherto, they had been as busy and restless (and, in justice to the charms of Prunella let it be added, as golden brown) as a couple of bees in summer—darting incessantly from one small object to another, and distilling from each what it held of least essential, so that in time they would have fashioned from a thousand trivialities that inferior honey that is apt to be labeled “feminine wisdom.”
But, now, these eyes were idle.
Or, rather, her memory seemed to be providing them with a vision so absorbing that nothing else could arrest their gaze.
In spite of himself, Master Ambrose felt a little uneasy in her presence. However, he tried to greet her in the tone of patronizing banter that he always used when addressing his daughter or her friends. But his voice had an unnatural sound as he cried, “Well, Prunella, and what have you all been doing to my Moonlove, eh? She came running home after dinner, and if it hadn’t been broad daylight, I should have said that she had seen a ghost. And then off she dashed, up hill and down dale, like a paper chaser without any paper. What have you all been doing to her, eh?”
“I don’t think we’ve been doing anything to her, Cousin Ambrose,” Prunella answered in a low, curiously toneless voice.
Ever since the scene with Moonlove that afternoon, Master Ambrose had had an odd feeling that facts were losing their solidity; and he had entered this house with the express purpose of bullying and hectoring that solidity back to them. Instead of which they were rapidly vanishing, becoming attenuated to a sort of nebulous atmosphere.
But Master Ambrose had stronger nerves and a more decided mind than Master Nathaniel. Two facts remained solid, namely that his daughter
