"Yes, if it's fine. We'd better, in any case, as it's five miles from a station, and we might not be able to get a car there. I don't think I could stand five miles in a horse fly." "You're always so impatient, darling. Having your own way so much has spoiled you. I expect B will want to come." "Well, she can if she likes." "I think I'd rather it was just you and me. We always have a lot of fun together." He gave her a hug and a kiss. The butler came in at that moment with the tea-tray, and smiled paternally. The footman who followed him looked abashed. "Look, Jarvis, we've found the very house," said Caroline, exhibiting a large photograph of Abington Abbey. "Lor, miss!" said the butler indulgently. Beatrix and Barbara came in, accompanied by the Dragon. Beatrix was even prettier than Caroline, with a frail ethereal loveliness that made her appear almost too good for this sinful world, which she wasn't at all, though she was a very charming creature. She was very fair, with a delicious complexion of cream and roses, and a figure of extreme slimness. She was still supposed to be in the schoolroom, and occasionally was so. She was only just eighteen, and wore her hair looped and tied with a big bow; but she would be presented in the spring and would then blossom fully. Barbara was very fair too,--a pretty girl with a smiling good-humoured face, but not so pretty as her sisters. She had her arm in that of the Dragon. Miss Waterhouse was tall and straight, with plentiful grey hair, and handsome regular features. Her age was given in the Grafton family as 'fifty if a day,' but she was not quite so old as that. She was one of those women who seem to be cut out for motherhood, and to have missed their vocation by not marrying, just as a born artist would have missed his if he had never handled a brush or a pen. Fortunately, such women usually find somebody else's children round whom to throw their all-embracing tenderness. Miss Waterhouse had found the engaging family of Grafton, and loved them just as if they had been her own. It was probably a good deal owing to her that George Grafton had not made a second marriage. Men whose wives die young, leaving them with a family of small children, sometimes do so for their sake. But the young Graftons had missed nothing in the way of feminine care; their father had had no anxiety on their account during their childhood, and they had grown into companions to him, in a way that they might not have done if they had had a step-mother. He owed more than he knew to the Dragon, though he knew that he owed her a great deal. She was of importance in the house, but she was self-effacing. He was the centre round which everything moved. He received a great deal from his children that they would have given to their mother if she had been alive. He was a fortunate man, at the age of fifty; for family affection is one of the greatest gifts of life, and he had it in full measure.