They laughed again. The dogs leaped in the air and barked with delight. Everything and every one seemed happy to-day. Darsie felt that if she lived to be a hundred she could never, by any possibility, reach a higher pinnacle of content. CHAPTER SIXTEEN. AFTER THREE YEARS. "Is your trunk ready, Darsie? Are you ready to come down? Lunch is on the table and we're all waiting. Have you fitted everything in? Oh dear, oh dear, how bleak and bare the room does look! I shall never have the heart to enter it after you're gone." Clemence Garnett, aged twenty years, gave a pitiful glance round the dismantled room, which a few hours before had been decorated with the many and varied objects which were Darsie's treasures. She looked at the wooden wardrobe, the doors of which swung wide, showing a row of empty pegs, at the scattering of paper and rejected ends of ribbon and lace which littered the floor, and finally back at the figure of Darsie herself, kneeling before the great black trunk, with her golden hair ruffling round a flushed, eager face. "Sit on it, Clemence, like a lamb. It's _got_ to meet, but it's inches apart still. Sit down with a flop, and be your heaviest, while I fight with the lock." "Better take something out. If you make it so full, it may burst half- way. How would you like that?" "Not much; but better than leaving anything behind. It wouldn't dare to burst after costing so much money. There! It's done. You're a pretty substantial weight, my dear. Now then for lunch and a rest; I've had a terrific morning." Darsie rose to her feet and stood for a moment before the mirror, putting a tidying touch to hair and dress. She was a tall, slim girl, nearly a head taller than the more substantial Clemence, and the easy grace which characterised her movements was the first thing which attracted an unaccustomed eye. Even Clemence, with perceptions dulled by custom, felt dimly that it was an agreeable thing to watch Darsie brush her hair and shake out her skirts, though in another person such acts would be prosaic and tiresome. The crisp hair needed nothing but a brush and a pat to settle itself into a becoming halo of waves, and the small face on the long white neck had a quaint, kitten-like charm. Clemence looked from the real Darsie to the reflected Darsie in the glass, and felt a sudden knife-like pang. "Oh, how I _hate_ you going! How dull it will be. Why _couldn't_ you be content to stay at home instead of taking up this Newnham craze? I shall miss you hideously, Darsie!" Darsie smiled involuntarily, then nobly tried to look sad. "I expect you will, but one grown-up at home is as much as we can afford, and there'll be lovely long vacs. You must think of those, and the letters, and coming up to see me sometimes, and term time will pass in a flash. I'll be back before you realise that I'm gone." Clemence pouted in sulky denial.