consent.
So Nanny, her face full of omens, wrapped the child into a woolen ball where only the eyes showed, and set it on the leather seat beside Augustine.
Augustine was a brilliant driver of the youthful passionate kind which wholly identifies itself with the car. Thus once his hands were on the wheel this morning he forgot Polly entirely. Yet this didnât matter to Polly. She too knew how to merge herself utterly in dear Bentley (another of her loves): the moment the engine broke into its purring, organ-like roar she uncovered her mouth and began singing treble to Bentleyâs bass, and for two hours Bentley and she did not for a moment stop singing, through Staines and Basingstoke, Stockbridge, Salisbury, out on the bare downs.
On the tops of those empty high downs, above the hanging woods of ancient yews clinging to their chalky sides, there was only a thin skin of rabbit-nibbled turf that was more thyme than grass and a sky full of larks. Polly had got her arms free now and waved to the larks, inviting their descant to make a trio of it.
Mellton lay in a deep river-valley folded into these bare chalk downs. In the flat bottom land as they neared the house there were noble woods of beech and sweet-chestnut, green pasture, deep lanes that Bentley almost filled, little hidden hamlets of mingled flint and brick with steep thatched roofs. Bentley and Polly sang together for them as they passed.
As Bentley rounded through the ever-open wrought-iron gates and purred his careful way on the last lap through the park, Polly was now entirely free of her cocoon and standing bolt upright against the dashboard, using both arms to conduct the whole chorus of nature. âHome!â she was chanting on every note she could compass, âHome! Home! Home!â And to Pollyâs ears everything round her intoned the answer â Home! â
Then at the front door of Mellton Chase Augustine switched off the engine and Polly and Bentley both fell silent together.
Augustine wiped her nose and lifted her out.
Mellton was large, nearly as large as Augustineâs lonely hermitage Newton Llantony. It was all an Elizabethan house, entirely faced and mullioned with stone and with a little half-naïve classical ornament. It had originally been built as a hollow square on the four sides of a central quadrangle, like a college. In the middle of the façade there was still a great vaulted archway like a college gate: once, you could have ridden on horseback under it right into the quadrangle without dismounting, but now the arch was blocked and a modern front door had been constructed in it.
The well-known music of Augustineâs Bentley could be heard afar, and the butler was standing waiting for them outside this front door when they arrived. Wantage was his name.
Wantage was a thin man, prematurely gray: his eyes stood out rather, for he had thyroid trouble.
13
Polly greeted Mr. Wantage warmly but politely (he was Mr . Wantage to her, by her motherâs fiat). Once inside the door she sat herself expectantly on the end of a certain long Bokhara rug: for as usual on first getting home she wanted to set out at once for the North Pole drawn on her sledge by a yelping team of Mr. Wantage across the frozen wastes of ballroom parquet.
For no longer was there any open quadrangle here at Mellton that all the business of the house had to criss-cross, wet or fine. A Victorian Wadamy had arisen who disliked so draughty a way of living. Fired by the example of the new London railway-stations and of Paxtonâs Crystal Palace, he had roofed the entire thing over with a dome of steel and glass. So now in the middle of the house there was nearly an acre of parquet dotted with eastern rugs, instead of the former lawn and flagged paths. What now stood waiting at the far side by the old mounting-block with its tethering-ring, at the foot of the stone steps leading up to the State Rooms and the Solar, was a grand piano.
The
So Nanny, her face full of omens, wrapped the child into a woolen ball where only the eyes showed, and set it on the leather seat beside Augustine.
Augustine was a brilliant driver of the youthful passionate kind which wholly identifies itself with the car. Thus once his hands were on the wheel this morning he forgot Polly entirely. Yet this didnât matter to Polly. She too knew how to merge herself utterly in dear Bentley (another of her loves): the moment the engine broke into its purring, organ-like roar she uncovered her mouth and began singing treble to Bentleyâs bass, and for two hours Bentley and she did not for a moment stop singing, through Staines and Basingstoke, Stockbridge, Salisbury, out on the bare downs.
On the tops of those empty high downs, above the hanging woods of ancient yews clinging to their chalky sides, there was only a thin skin of rabbit-nibbled turf that was more thyme than grass and a sky full of larks. Polly had got her arms free now and waved to the larks, inviting their descant to make a trio of it.
Mellton lay in a deep river-valley folded into these bare chalk downs. In the flat bottom land as they neared the house there were noble woods of beech and sweet-chestnut, green pasture, deep lanes that Bentley almost filled, little hidden hamlets of mingled flint and brick with steep thatched roofs. Bentley and Polly sang together for them as they passed.
As Bentley rounded through the ever-open wrought-iron gates and purred his careful way on the last lap through the park, Polly was now entirely free of her cocoon and standing bolt upright against the dashboard, using both arms to conduct the whole chorus of nature. âHome!â she was chanting on every note she could compass, âHome! Home! Home!â And to Pollyâs ears everything round her intoned the answer â Home! â
Then at the front door of Mellton Chase Augustine switched off the engine and Polly and Bentley both fell silent together.
Augustine wiped her nose and lifted her out.
Mellton was large, nearly as large as Augustineâs lonely hermitage Newton Llantony. It was all an Elizabethan house, entirely faced and mullioned with stone and with a little half-naïve classical ornament. It had originally been built as a hollow square on the four sides of a central quadrangle, like a college. In the middle of the façade there was still a great vaulted archway like a college gate: once, you could have ridden on horseback under it right into the quadrangle without dismounting, but now the arch was blocked and a modern front door had been constructed in it.
The well-known music of Augustineâs Bentley could be heard afar, and the butler was standing waiting for them outside this front door when they arrived. Wantage was his name.
Wantage was a thin man, prematurely gray: his eyes stood out rather, for he had thyroid trouble.
13
Polly greeted Mr. Wantage warmly but politely (he was Mr . Wantage to her, by her motherâs fiat). Once inside the door she sat herself expectantly on the end of a certain long Bokhara rug: for as usual on first getting home she wanted to set out at once for the North Pole drawn on her sledge by a yelping team of Mr. Wantage across the frozen wastes of ballroom parquet.
For no longer was there any open quadrangle here at Mellton that all the business of the house had to criss-cross, wet or fine. A Victorian Wadamy had arisen who disliked so draughty a way of living. Fired by the example of the new London railway-stations and of Paxtonâs Crystal Palace, he had roofed the entire thing over with a dome of steel and glass. So now in the middle of the house there was nearly an acre of parquet dotted with eastern rugs, instead of the former lawn and flagged paths. What now stood waiting at the far side by the old mounting-block with its tethering-ring, at the foot of the stone steps leading up to the State Rooms and the Solar, was a grand piano.
The
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