They would creep silently up behind her and clap her heavily upon the shoulders, or knock her hat over her eyes, or ruffle her hair with their hands, or try to kiss her. The maids, several of whom were often present, as the housekeeper and the butler were at that time taking their morning coffee in the housekeeper’s room, would only laugh at her discomfiture, or join in the sport, gutting pebbles down her neck, or flicking her face with their dusting-brushes.

“You look as if you’d been drawn through a quickset hedge-backwards,” remarked the head gardener’s wife one day when Laura was more than usually dishevelled; but, when told what had happened, she only laughed and said: “Well, you’re only young once. You must get all the fun you can. You give them as good as they give you and they’ll soon learn to respect you.” She dared not tell Miss Lane, for she knew that lady would complain to Sir Timothy and there would be what she thought of as “a fuss.” She preferred to endure the teasing, which, after all, occupied but a few minutes during an outing in which there were rich compensations.

Excepting the men working in the fields, she seldom saw any one between the houses on her round. Now and then she would meet the estate carpenter with his bag of tools, going to mend a fence or a gate, and occasionally she saw Sir Timothy himself, spud in hand, taking what he called “a toddle round the estate,” and he would greet her in his jovial way as “our little Postmistress-General” and tell her to go to Geering, the head gardener, and ask him to show her through the glasshouses and give her some flowers. Which was kind of him, but unnecessary, as Mr. Geering had, on his own responsibility, conducted her several times through the long, warm, damp, scented hothouses, picking a flower here and there to add to her bouquet. My glasshouses, the gardener called them; our glasshouses, said his wife when speaking of them; to the actual owner they were merely the glasshouses. So much for the privilege of ownership!