“Why, yes, my Peggy,” he said. “These chaps are sportsmen, that is, they want a better time than the other fellow. They aren’t going to spend all their money to let the fox get into a hole every half-mile or so, and stop their gallop, no fear. They want to make him run. So an old chap rides around on a pony and stops the possible holes.”
“What a loathsome thing,” she said. “Pull out the stakes, Fram.”
“It’s a bit late in the day for that poor chap,” he said, as he knelt and, with some difficulty, got them up. “It’s too late for him, but it may come in handy for the next one, I rather think that fox-hounds might a little disturb your beavers, if you had them,” he said.
As they walked back, he said: “I believe you don’t often see beavers. They move at night; and then, they are said to be very good to eat and the fur is precious. I dare say you’d have to have a warden, or people would come to poach them. Then, they would be said to kill the game, probably, or spoil the hunting or something.”
Near the house, they stopped for a moment to look at the old place; it was very beautiful, in the late autumnal sun.
“Well, what do you think, Peggy?” he said. “I must go in to see this man about it now. Would you like this place as your home?”
“It is very beautiful,” she said, “and I know that you’ve set your heart on it. It could be made the most beautiful place almost, in the whole wide world.”
“But you don’t like it?”
“I think I could love it, but I know that I would love it better if I had the Spirr Wood; I love that place.”
“You shall have it, if it’s to be had,” he said. “But it may not be for sale.”
“I don’t want to seem to be making a bargain with you, Fram. If you love this place, have it; in many ways it is most beautiful. If we have the Spirr Wood, do you think that my cousin, Timothy Holtspur, might be the warden? He would be so happy living alone in the wood there, painting the things there.”
Frampton wrinkled his nose, in a way he had, at the mention of Timothy, who was not much of a painter, and something of a drunkard.
“It might make Timothy pull up his socks,” he said. “So I’ll go in and see this, whatever he is, Knares-Yocksir. If he’s like his name he’ll be unique.
“About Timothy,” he added: “If he were warden, you would expect him to have a hut, or tiny cottage, right in the covert?”
“Yes, he wouldn’t mind that; he’d love to be right away, among wild things.”
“There’s a place well above the water,” he said, “where we could get in a very nice cottage. But how about a stiff winter there, and getting his supplies?”
“The people who bring our things could leave things for him,” she said, “and he could come in to us, once a week, and bring his drawings.”
He wrinkled his nose again, for he did not much value the drawings, so far.
“Did you ever meet old Bill,” he said, “Old Bill the Bosun, the bird-painter? He lives on a bird sanctuary in Essex somewhere. I could get some pointers from him.”
At the house, the woman was waiting.
“My father will be glad to see you now,” she said, “if you wish to see him.”
“I won’t stay,” Margaret said. “I’ll go out to your father.”
Frampton went in to see the sick man on his bed. He found him like most sick men, perverse, irritable and unwilling to make a decision. He was the grandson of the man who had put the hounds into the theatre; he had come down in the world from want of intelligence, more than from any failing, such as drink. He did not get on with his daughter, and didn’t want to sell. Piggott would do all that. On being asked if the Spirr Wood went with the property, he said: “Of course, and all the fields to Tibb’s Cross.” He was wearied by this time, and referred him again to Piggott.
On this, Frampton said, that he hoped he would soon be better. The daughter came with him to the door, and directed him to Stubbington, where Piggott’s office lay alongside the Abbey gates. It was under six miles, she said, by the road to the right there. He could see her watching him with her shrewd, hard eye, to try to discover if he were thinking of buying. Several people must have come there, he thought, and given her hopes, but then had gone and never made a sign.
“Of course,” he said to himself, “the place is mortgaged to the hilt, and when the mortgage is paid off, they’ll have possibly fifty pounds a year to live upon.”
He looked back as he went up the rise to the car, and saw her looking after him, with a strange look of anger, hope and despair.
“It’s a bad job for a woman,” he muttered, “to be all tangled up and annulled by a man like that. She ought to have been married and bred from.”
He found his father wrapped up in a rug, sitting inside the car.
“Well, Fram,” the old man said, “Margaret tells me that you’ve lost your heart at last. Is it as lovely as she says?”
“Oh yes,” Frampton said. “It’s good enough to bargain for. I want to go back by Stubbington to find out what the snags are. What have you been finding?”
“All sorts of wonders,” Margaret said.