Joan Smith: Delsie

While they talked, Bobbie had to scramble into the hole and claim it for her own. The footmen, not satisfied with one miracle a day, were busily winding the chain around the other tree and heaving it, too, out of the earth. Bobbie climbed out of the first hole only to hurl herself into the other. Her stepmother, regarding the streaks of dirt on her pelisse, hadn’t the heart to restrain her. She felt the urge to jump into the hole herself. Before many seconds, deVigne found an excuse to do just that, saying he’d help Bobbie get out, but once down in the excavation, he was in no hurry to get out, and began poking around the corners.

“Look, Mama, I found a bag!” Bobbie called up. In her fingers she held one of the canvas bags, which was well known by now to hold a hundred guineas.

“Oh, no, not again!” Mrs. Grayshott cried in vexation.

DeVigne took the bag from the child and lifted her up onto the ground before clambering out himself. “Shall we rob your favorite charity of this one?” he asked Delsie.

“No, I shan’t keep it.”

“The boys deserve a bonus for their work. You have twenty-five hundred to give to the purse-pinched schoolteachers-a nice round figure. Let us share the wealth. We will include their labor in filling in the holes.”

“Yes, a reward for stopping criminals is not uncommon,” she allowed.

Watling nearly expired with self-importance when he was given the responsibility of passing out the reward, one guinea at a time, with a reminder at each coin that it was not to be wasted.

“Really, those stone-lined holes are so neatly done, it seems a shame to destroy them,” Delsie said. “Perhaps some flowerpots…”

“Too much shade,” he advised. “And leaving the trees as they are would be an invitation to the smugglers to return. If I did not stand so deep in disgrace already, I would dare to suggest you have the holes filled in at once and take the boxes off the tree roots to allow them to grow more normally.” When she did not take him to task for this interference, he continued. “As I am in your black books, however, I will leave your common sense to recommend it to you.”

“I suppose you are right, but it seems a pity.”

Watling was sent off to the Hall at once for shovels, before she should change her mind. The three family went to the Cottage, but they could not long keep their news to themselves. They had to pile into the carriage to run over the Dower House to tell Lady Jane and Sir Harold the news.

“Ah, he was using those holes he had dug under the apple trees, was he?” Harold asked. “I should have known it. I recall his having it done at the time of the Bonaparte scare. It quite slipped my mind.”

His wife turned a fulminating eye on him. “Do you mean to stand there and tell us, Harold, that you knew of those holes under the apple trees all this while, and didn’t bother to tell us?”

“Of course I knew it. It was no secret.”

“It was a secret from us,” Jane snapped. “You did not know it, did you, Max?”

“Certainly not.”

“I believe you was in London when he had it done,” Harold said vaguely. “Used a design I showed him of an old Roman impluvium, and figured after the scare was over, he’d use them for that again.”

“What the devil is an impluvium?” Jane asked irritably.

She heard in great detail, supported with sketches from various books, that an impluvium was a shallow rock-lined pool for catching rainwater in the days of the Roman occupation, and also used sometimes for ornamental purposes, such as decorative fish and lily pads, or for children to wade in.

“I want a wading pond!” Bobbie said at once.

“I should like an ornamental fish pond,” her mama took it up. “DeVigne, could you not stop the men before they fill in our holes? If they are left perfectly open and visible, the smugglers would not use them.”

“They’re your holes,” he capitulated, and together Bobbie, Delsie and deVigne dashed back to the Cottage. Lady Jane and Sir Harold were not far behind them, to view the impluvia for themselves.

There was no danger that the work had already been done. A sort of informal holiday had been declared at both the Hall and the Dower House, with every maid and footman who could possibly evade his duties there to see Watling command his crew in the interesting feat of lifting the trees. As the employers were unaware of this holiday, however, the observers drifted off rather quickly.

“I knew I could smell brandy in this orchard,” Jane declared, sniffing the air.

“What you was smelling was decaying apples,” her husband pointed out. “They ferment, my dear. You recall we often have a grouse or pheasant drunk from eating them fly against the windows and break his neck.”

“Yes, and you will have fish drunk from the remains of brandy swimming into the walls of your hole and breaking their necks,” Jane said, to show she was not convinced of any error on her part, “If they have necks.”

“Fish do not have necks,” Sir Harold informed her, and was summarily cut off when he proceeded to tell her what they did have. The morning was spent in examining the secret hiding place, and as Mrs. Grayshott had no servants at all, the party repaired to the Hall for luncheon.

“Have you thought of what you will do with the money?” Harold asked Delsie.

“It will be used for some charitable purpose,” she answered.

“Oxford could use it,” he suggested. “You might set up a bursary in Andrew’s name, or buy the Tatford Library Collection that is going up for auction.”

“I like the idea of a bursary,” she said, considering. “To help some poor but bright student further his education. Andrew was a Cambridge man. It ought to go to Cambridge, not Oxford.”

“I daresay you could get the Tatford Library for twenty-five hundred,” Sir Harold persisted.

“I wonder if Cambridge would rather have that than a bursary,” was her highly unsatisfactory reply.

“Cambridge? What would Cambridge want with a classical library? Oxford is the place to study the classics,” he said.

“Then I shall make it a bursary,” she decided, appearing not to notice that his aim was to secure the money for his own school. “The Andrew Grayshott Memorial Bursary it will be called.”

Sir Harold opened his mouth to object, but was interrupted by his wife, who suggested “the Brandy Bursary” would be a suitable nickname. Discussion then turned on providing Mrs. Grayshott with some temporary help till she managed to hire servants, and deVigne offered the resumption of Nellie’s and Olive’s services.

“I’ll send a footman over so you have a man about the house,” Jane added.

With this settled, it was time for the Grayshotts to go home. Miss Milne and Bobbie were called, and Jane and Harold went back to the Dower House.

As the carriage wended its familiar way down the lane to the post road, Delsie said to her stepdaughter, “Are you happy to be coming home at last?”

“Yes, but I’ll like it better when we’re all living together at the Hall. Uncle Max has five kittens in the barn.”

Max cleared his throat, and ran a finger around his collar.

“What do you mean? We are not moving to the Hall,” Delsie said to her daughter.

“Uncle Max says we are. Didn’t you, Uncle Max?”

“That is not exactly what I said,” he parried.

With a barely concealed smile, Miss Milne said that perhaps Lord deVigne would give Bobbie one of his kittens.

“I don’t want one. I want them all,” she replied.

“Precocious. You are turning into a woman already,” her uncle complimented her.

At the Cottage, Miss Milne took her charge upstairs, and Mrs. Grayshott at once rounded on deVigne. “You know I promised Andrew faithfully I would look after Roberta. I hope you have not been giving her the idea she is to go to you. I don’t know how you think I should allow it, when the main reason I married Andrew was to provide a guardian for her.”