The Sherwood Ring Read Online Free Page B

was now three weeks since my arrival and we were well into June— but I was in no mood to do anything but sit on the floor with my back to the garden and think bitterly about my wrongs and grievances. There were a great many of them; and I was getting a certain miserable satisfaction from laying them all out and rummaging through them over and over again.
    It was all very well for my father to say that I couldn't expect Uncle Enos to change his ways on my account. But surely my father had not supposed that Uncle Enos was going to behave as if he hardly knew I was even in the house? After three weeks I was still no better acquainted with him than I had been at the beginning. In fact, I almost never saw him except at meals, which were eaten in state at a long walnut table designed for twenty, with an enormous centerpiece of antique crystal and silver to conceal anyone sitting at one end from his companion at the other. Uncle Enos would come wandering in on the last stroke of the gong, with a book under his arm, say "Good morning" or "Good evening" absent-mindedly to me, prop open the book in front of him, and read it (as far as I could judge for the distance and the centerpiece) throughout the meal. The rest of the day he usually spent working in his study, and when interrupted would simply tell me over his shoulder to run along and stop bothering him.
    Where was I to run to? What was I to do with myself? There was always the house to explore, of course — and I had to admit that Rest-and-be-thankful was a wonderful house — but what was the use of finding all sorts of fascinating things if I didn't know what they meant and the only person who could tell me wouldn't take the trouble?
    That scrap of tartan, for instance.
    I had just come across the scrap of tartan as I was turning out the bottom drawer of the Chippendale cabinet. It was a very small scrap, and looked as if it had been torn roughly out of a much larger piece like a kilt or a plaid. Somebody, perhaps a hundred years before, had pinned it carefully to a sheet of letter paper that was now dry and rustling with old age. Written across the paper, in brown faded ink, was one line — a verse from the Bible: "Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall." The writer had then added three exclamation marks, and drawn a small hand in the margin with one finger pointed warningly upward at the scrap of tartan.
    It was not a scrap of the Grahame tartan. The colors and design — what old Mrs. Campbell in Scotland had called "the sett" — were quite different. Ours was very dark — mostly dull greens and blacks on a ground of deep blue. This was bright scarlet, with a dazzling pattern of yellows and whites and greens that must once have fairly glittered in the sun. If it was not ours, then whose was it? Why had it been so carefully kept all these years? Uncle Enos, of course, probably knew. I looked longingly across the room at the door of the study; but the door of the study was firmly shut, and I knew it would be useless to knock. Uncle Enos didn't want me bothering him. Nobody wanted me bothering him. Even Pat —
    I threw the scrap of tartan back where I had found it and shut the drawer of the cabinet with a savage bang. Pat was the real trouble. I could have put up with Uncle Enos and the study door and the dining-room table and all the rest, if it only hadn't been for Pat.
    Pat had said quite distinctly before he went away that he was going to see me again very soon, whether Uncle Enos liked it or not. And I had been fool enough to believe him. I had watched the mail for days. I had found myself wandering casually time and again up through the orchard to the gate and leaning there almost as if I were waiting for somebody. But he had never come back. There had not even been a word from him.
    Well, if that was the way he wanted it, why should I worry myself about him? Probably he had never really liked me at all, and only said he was going to see