The trap drew up in front of the house. Tim held the horse's head, Tony stood among the bags. The leavetaking began. Amory and Cosimo were going to Cumberland for the rest of the summer. They would have liked to go to Norway, but the money would no longer run to it. They seemed a little shy of one another. They had been at the Brear a fortnight, and had had the little room over the porch. The twins were remaining behind for the present. Dorothy had said they would be no trouble. This was entirely untrue. They were more trouble than all the rest put together. Corin, near the schoolroom window, was wrangling with an eight years old Woodgate now. "They do, there! On Hampstead Heath! I've seen them, an' they've hats, an' waterbottles, an' broomsticks!" "Pooh, broomsticks! My father has a big elephant-gun!" "Well ... mine goes to great big Meetings, an' says 'Hear hear!'" "My father's in India!" "Well, so was mine!" "_I've_ seen them troop the Colour at the Horse Guards' Parade!" "So've I!" Corin mendaciously averred. The other boy opened his eyes wide and protruded his mouth. It is rarely that one boy does not know when another boy is lying. "Oh, what a big one! _You'd_ catch it if Uncle Stan heard you!" "Well," Corin pouted, "--I will--or else I'll cry all night--hard--and I'll make Bonnie cry too!--" "Well, an' so shall I, again, an' then I'll have seen it twice, an' you'll only have seen it once, an' if I see it every time you do you'll _never_ have seen it as often as me!" Then Stan's voice was heard. "Corin, come here." It was an atmosphere of insensate militarism, but the Pratts were content to leave their offspring to breathe it for the present. They had another matter to attend to--their own marital relations. It had at last occurred to them that you cannot rule others until you can govern yourself, and they were going to see what could be done about it. They had secured a cottage miles away from anywhere, at the head of a narrow-gauge railway, and it remained to be seen whether quiet and privacy and the resources they might find within themselves would avail them better than the opposites of these things had done. There was just the chance that they might--their only chance. The twins, if all went well, would join them by and by. In the meantime they must see red, and learn to do things with once telling. So Amory took the struggling Corin into her arms--he wanted to go to the armoury of wooden guns--and kissed him. Then he ran unconcernedly off. Dorothy saw the sad little lift of Amory's bosom, guessed the cause, and laughed. "Shocking little ingrates!" she said. "Noel's joy when I go away is sometimes indecent.--But don't be afraid they'll be any trouble to us here. You see the rabble we have in any case." "It's very good of you," Amory murmured awkwardly.