his spare time building canoes

Professor Leighrail

This is how he began

Marguerite, I don't want to frighten you

Your will will always be mine, Marguerite

Dimbie and I—and Amelia

CHAPTER I

WHICH INTRODUCES DIMBIE

Outside, the world is bathed in sunshine, beautiful, warm, life-giving spring sunshine.

Other worlds than mine may be shivering in a March wind, but my own little corner is simply basking.

The chestnut in the frog-pond field at the bottom of the garden is holding forth eager arms, crowned with little sticky, swelling buds, to the white, warm light. The snowdrops and crocuses have raised their pretty faces for a caress, and a chaffinch perched in the apple tree is, in its customary persistent fashion, endeavouring to outsing a thrush who keeps informing his lady-love that she may be clever enough to lay four speckled eggs, but her voice, well—without wishing to be too personal—would bear about the same relation to his as the croak of those silly frogs in the field would bear to the note of his esteemed friend Mr. Nightingale, who was still wintering in the south.

Yes, there is sunshine out of doors and sunshine in my heart. So much sunshine, that in my exuberance I have only just refrained from embracing Amelia, in spite of her down-at-heel, squeaky shoes, rakish cap, and one-and-three-ha'penny pearl necklace.

You will surmise I have had a fortune left me by my great-uncle. I don't possess a great-uncle. That I have been the recipient of a new Paris hat. Wrong. That someone has said I am the prettiest girl in the county. Bosh! That Peter has ceased to bully mother. That will happen when the millennium arrives.

Oh, foolish conjecturer! You will never guess. It is something far more delightful than any of these things. I will whisper it to you. "Dimbie is coming home this evening." You smile while I ecstatically hug Jumbles. "Dimbie's a dog?" you hazard. "A white, pink-eyed, objectionable Maltese terrier." I chuckle at your being so very wrong. You are not brilliant; in fact, you are stupid.

Dimbie's a husband. My husband. And he's been away for three days at the bedside of his sick Aunt Letitia, who lives in Yorkshire. I think it is most unreasonable for any aunt to live in Yorkshire and be ill when we live in Surrey. It is so far away. Anyhow, Dimbie shall never go away again to Aunt Letitia, sick or well, without taking me with him. For I find I cannot get on at all without him. When I turn a retrospective eye upon the years without Dimbie, it seems to me that I did not know the meaning of the word happiness.

I was foolish enough to say this to Peter just before I was married, and he sniffed in the objectionable way which mother and I have always so specially disliked. It sounds undutiful to speak of father thus, but he does sniff. And I might as well remark in passing that I am very far from being attached to Peter, as I always call him behind his back, being less like a father than anyone I have ever met. I am sorry that this should be so, but I didn't choose him for a parent. Parents have a say in their children's existence, but you can't select your own progenitors. Were this within your power, General Peter Macintosh and I would only be on distant bowing terms at the moment, certainly not parent and child. And yet mother would be lonely without me, although I have left her. Poor, darling mother! That is my one trouble, the fly in the ointment; her loneliness, her defencelessness.

I do not mean that Peter kicks her with clogs, or throws lamps at her head. But he worries her, nags at her.

Now Dimbie never nags. I think it was his utter unlikeness to Peter that first attracted me. Peter is small and narrow in his views; Dimbie is large in every sense of the word. Peter has green eyes; Dimbie has blue. Peter has a straight, chiselled nose—the Macintosh nose he calls it: Dimbie has a dear crooked one—an accident at football. Peter has—— But I think I'll just keep to Dimbie's "points" without referring to General Macintosh any further—well, because Dimbie is incomparable.

I met him first in an oil-shop in Dorking. I was ordering some varnish for one of Peter's canoes. Since Peter "retired," which, unfortunately for mother and me, was many years ago—he having married late in life—he has spent his spare time in a workshop at the bottom of the garden building canoes which, up to the present, he has never succeeded in getting to float. But that is a mere detail. No one has ever expressed a wish to float in them, so what matters? The point is that this arduous work kept him shut up in his workshop for many hours away from mother and me. It was then we breathed and played and laughed, and Miss Fairbrother, my governess, read us entrancing stories and taught me how to slide down the staircase on a tea-tray and do other delightful things, while mother kept a sharp look-out for the advance of the enemy.

PETER HAS SPENT HIS SPARE TIME BUILDING CANOES

Well, Dimbie and I got to know each other in this little oil-shop. I, or my muslin frock, became entangled in some wire-netting, which really had no business to be anywhere but at an ironmonger's, and Dimbie disentangled me, there being no one else present to perform this kindly act, the shopman being up aloft searching for his best copal varnish.

We were not engaged till quite six weeks had elapsed after this, because Peter would not sanction such a proceeding. He said I must behave as a general's daughter, and not as a tradesman's; and when I pointed out that royalties frequently became engaged after seeing each other about half a dozen times, and that publicly, he just shouted at me. For years mother and I have been trying to persuade Peter that we are not soldiers, but he doesn't appear to believe us. He only gave his consent in the end to our engagement because he was tired and gouty and wanted to be let alone.

Dimbie was like the importunate widow, and he importuned in season and out of season, from break of day till set of sun. He neglected his business, took rooms in Dorking, would fly up to the city for a couple of hours each day, and spent the rest of his time on our doorstep when he wasn't allowed inside the house. Peter tried threats, bribery, shouting, drill language of the most fearful description; but Dimbie stuck manfully to his guns, and at last Peter was bound to admit that Dimbie must have come of some good fighting stock. Dimbie admitted most cheerfully that he had, that his great-great-grandfather had stormed the heights of Abraham and Wolfe. At which Peter laid down his arms and briefly said, "Take her!" And Dimbie did so at the very earliest opportunity, which was during the Christmas holidays. And so I am his greatly-loving and much-loved wife.

Much loved I know I am by the very way he looks at me, strokes my hair, whispers my name, stares angrily at Amelia when upon some pretext she lingers in the room after bringing in coffee and won't leave us alone.

Ah, that