“I dislike all injustice,” says Cicely, coldly, “and I do not consider that Mr. Bertram is in the least done justice to by his friends and relations. How badly every one treated him yesterday in return for a most learned and interesting lecture!” While she is thus defending himself and his doctrines in his absence, Bertram, still seated under the trees, sees in the distance a girl’s figure; she wears a black straw hat, a black jacket, and a grey stuff skirt; she has thread gloves and leather highlows, the highlows are white with dust; she has two deep baskets filled with primroses and covered by red cotton handkerchiefs; she carries one on each arm. She has a round, fair, freckled face, a sweet and cheerful expression, and a fringe of naturally curling brown hair. She approaches Bertram smiling: “Oh, gracious, sir! Don’t get up for the likes of me. Mother told me as how you were under this tree; I just met her by the Gate, so I thought I’d come and have a peep at you.” “Thanks,” replies Bertram, distantly. “Don’t say ‘as how,’ Annie. You are heavily laden this morning.” “Oh, no, sir. Primroses have no roots; they make a fine show, but they don’t weigh naught.” “Like the party of which they are the emblem.” Annie smiles, in entire ignorance of his meaning, and sits down by him, planting her baskets on the ground. “These aren’t very good flowers,” she says, regretfully, “the rain’s spiled ’em. They’ll do to put at the horses’ ears. Why do they put ’em at the horses’ ears, sir? I asked a groom onst, and he says, says he, it means that when our party come back to office we’ll take the tax off horses. Is that so, sir?” “They are not only at the horses’ ears, but at the asses’ button-holes!” says Bertram. “As for taxation, it is the arc of Toryism.” “Dear me!” he thinks, “why will she sit down by me? With all the will in the world one cannot but fret occasionally at their manners, though of course manner is only the shell, and ought not to weigh with one!” Annie is meanwhile making some primroses up into a bunch. “What had you said to mother?” she asks. “Her back was quite set up, like.” “Your mother,” replies Bertram, “is the most estimable and indefatigable of persons, but she has the taint of painfully narrowed and archaic views: she persists in considering herself of an inferior class; she persists in speaking of ‘quality,’ by which she means the patrician order, as something superhuman and alien to herself. It distresses me.” “Oh, yes! Mother’s always going on about our engagement. She says as how----” “‘As how,’ again, Annie!” “Well, sir, that’s just what mother means. You speak in one way and I in another. And your friends will laugh at my way of speaking, sir; they certainly will.” “Let them laugh! Besides, we shall not see them, Annie; we shall live wholly apart from them, in some remote spot of our own.” “Out o’ London, sir?” “Out of London beyond a doubt. Is that any subject of regret?”