Page:Emma Speed Sampson--The shorn lamb.djvu/313

309. The bones of a salt herring wrapped in an old rabbit skin and sewed up in his pillow, where it smelled most vilely, was the last straw that made him determine to sleep in his beloved attic.

By the early morning light he always paid his respects to the ancestor hanging over the highboy, the charming gentleman in cue and stock. Philip had looked him up in the family annals and knew him to be the one responsible for the sunken garden and the beautiful proportions of The Hedges.

"I couldn't look you in the face, old fellow, if I were not bringing back some of the beauty of the place," he would say to the portrait. "I'm slow but I am sure."

Philip's move was but added irritation to Aunt Peachy. More and more she brooded over it.

"He air sech a debble he ain't eben scairt er hants," she muttered as she crouched in her chair. Not often was her cackle heard in the last weeks. She muttered and groaned and fashioned strange things of rags and clay or bits of putty with her clawlike hands. The only time when she seemed like herself was just after a visit to the jug, which needed more frequent replenishings than formerly. "I's as big a debble as he is," she declared to