When her father came down she was relieved to find that he seemed to be in his usual health; and in answer to her question whether he had slept well, he replied in the affirmative, and was mildly surprised that she should enquire.  Directly he had gone off to the library she ran upstairs to put on her habit.

For the first time she was struck by its shabbiness; she had never given a thought to it before.  Her evening-dresses, though plain and inexpensive, were always dainty and fresh, but she wore her habit as long as it would hold together, and cared nothing for the fact that her hat was stained by the rain:  they were her “working clothes,” and strictly considered as such.  But this morning she surveyed the skirt ruefully, and thought of the trim and apparently always new habits which the Bannerdale girls wore; and she brushed it with a care which it had never yet received.  As a rule she wore a black scarf, or none at all; but as she looked at herself in the glass she was not satisfied, and she found a scarlet tie which she had bought in a fit of extravagance, and put it on.  The touch of colour heightened the beauty of her clear ivory face and brightened up the old habit; but she looked at herself in the glass with something like shamefacedness:  why was she so anxious about her appearance this morning of all the mornings?  For an instant she was tempted to snatch off the tie; but in the end she let it remain; and she brushed the soft tendrils of her hair at her forehead with unusual care before she fastened on her hat.

Her father was walking up and down the terrace slowly as she came out, and he raised his head and looked at her absently.

“I shall probably ride into Bryndermere, father,” she said.  “Shall I post your letters?  I know you will be anxious for that one to the book-sellers to go,” she added, with a smile.

His eyes dropped and he seemed disconcerted for a minute, then he said: 

“No, no; I’ll send it by Jason; I’ve not written it yet;” and he turned away from her and resumed his pacing to and fro.

Ida went to the stable-yard and got on to Rupert by the aid of the stone “mounting block” from which Charles the Second had climbed, laughingly, to the white horse which figures in so many pictures of the Merry Monarch, and rode out of the court-yard, watched with pride by Jason.  Before she had gone far he ran after her.

“If you’re riding by West Hill, Miss Ida, perhaps you’d look at the cattle-shed there.  Williams says that the roof’s falling in.”

“Very well,” she called back in her clear voice.

“Oh, and, Miss Ida, there’s a big stone washed out of the weir; I’m thinking it ought to be put back or we’ll have the meadows above flooded this winter.”

She laughed and nodded and put Rupert to a trot, for she knew that while she was within hearing Jason would bombard her with similar tales of woe.  Not a slate slid from the old roof of the Hall, or a sheep fell lame, but the matter was referred to her.