BIDDEN TO BRING HIM BACK TO THE FEAST

THE FORBIDDEN ROOM,
OR
“MINE ANSWER WAS MY DEED.”

CHAPTER I.

“BOYS AND GIRLS, AND ALL SORTS.”

NEVER within the memory of middle-aged Libbie, the dairymaid, had there been such a bustle of preparation within the walls of Gaybrook Farm, as on a certain June day, not many summers back.

From early dawn—which means somewhere between three and four o’clock—old Mrs. Busson, the farmer’s wife, had been awake and astir.

From the lumber-room in the attics, to the parlour, with its high-arched fire-place, filled in to-day with boughs of green and big bowls of June roses, and from the cheese-room, under the roof, to the brew-house in the yard below, every nook and corner in the roomy old farm had been visited, on some pretence or another, by the time that noon and the dinner-hour arrived simultaneously.

“And yet,” declared Polly, the rosy-cheeked “odd-girl,” “though the Missus hasn’t been off her feet for all these hours, she’s as fresh as a sky-lark.”

“Ay, as brisk as a bee amongst clover,” chimed in old Simon, the shepherd. Leaning against the wall of an outhouse, his dim eyes followed Mrs. Busson’s quick movements as she flitted from dairy to larder, finally disappearing into the garden, as nimbly as though she were seventeen instead of seventy.

“And what’s it all about?” asked Simon, slowly; “I forgets again.”

Polly sighed. Already three times that morning she had given the explanation to the old man, and the importance of being his informant was wearing off.

“What’s it all about?” repeated Simon.

“Don’t you mind, Simon; I told you that the Missus’ ladies, them she was nurse two years ago, are coming down with their children to stay some while at the farm. There! if they were all live princes and princesses the mistress couldn’t fuss more about them. My word! Simon; the cakes, and the pies, and the jams, and the junkets are something to see.”

“Is it boys or gals that is coming?” asked Simon, with a note of alarm in his voice. “Be they young, or the middlin’ mischieevious age?”

“Oh! that I can’t tell yer; they be all sorts, I think.”

“Mussey me! boys an’ girls an’ all sorts,” cried the old shepherd; and, as if to make preparation at once against the approaching foe, he whistled to his equally ancient dog, who was making an exhaustive examination of a bare veal knucklebone, and tottered towards the meadows.

But Simon’s heart was not the only one which, amongst all the pleasant stir of preparation at the farm, was filled with alarm at the thought of the impending visitors.

One Gaston Delzant, a small, black-haired, black-eyed French boy, aged seven, was literally trembling within his patent leather shoes at the prospect of the coming guests.

He had not been long in England, and though the healthy life at Gaybrook, and Mrs. Busson’s fostering care had worked wonders in strengthening the feeble little creature, Gaston still looked, as the burly farmer declared, “just a poor little snip of a frog-fed Frenchy.”

“Don’t talk that sort of unfeeling way, Busson, before the child,” his wife had admonished him, “for, don’t you make any mistake, though he’s slow to speak, he understands sharp enough all that he hears.”

Indeed, so far as poor Gaston’s peace of mind was concerned, this was only too true.

He understood so perfectly all that the maids said, as they interchanged their fears that the young gentlemen from school would teaze him out of his senses, that on the day of their arrival, Gaston was wildly planning some means of escape from the farm.

But perhaps the general fragrance of cakes and pies which filled the house and imparted a flavour of festivity to the atmosphere exercised a reassuring influence on Gaston, for after all he abandoned his intention of taking refuge in a remote barn, the paradise of owls and bats, and remained instead to face the enemy.

And here it was approaching in very earnest.

The clock was still striking four, and Mrs. Busson was giving her last look to the tea-table, when the sound of wheels became audible, and presently, through a cloud of dust from the high road, emerged the two Noah’s-ark like vehicles, popularly known as the “station conveyances.”

“Boys and gals, and all sorts, I should say it war,” muttered Simon, looking from behind a quick hedge, whilst with one delighted cry of “Bless their dear hearts, there they are to be sure,” the mistress of Gaybrook Farm flung wide her doors and flew to greet her guests.

Every part of her trim little person, from her lavender topknot to the toes of her neat pattens, was so quivering with rapturous glee that as she sped down her flower-bordered pathway, she seemed the very embodiment of smiling welcome.

Yet, although Mrs. Busson’s appearance was hailed by a round of vociferous cheering from the new arrivals, her bright face clouded suddenly as she glanced from one carriage-load to the other.

“Why!” she gasped; “wherever is Miss Agatha—Mrs. Durand, I should say?”

“Left