August was drawing to its close. It had been a month of glorious weather, such halcyon days as made the farmer’s occupation seem just the most delightful calling possible for man. There was not much arable land within ken of South Hill, but what cornfields there were promised abundant crops; and one of the magnates of the land—who, in his dudgeon against a revolutionary re-adjustment of the game-laws at that time looming in the dim future, had rough-ploughed a thousand acres or so of his best land rather than let it under obnoxious conditions—may have thought regretfully of the corn that might have been reaped off those breezy uplands and in those fertile valleys, where at his bidding sprang cockle instead of barley. It was a month of holiday-making for everybody—for even the labour of the fields, looked at from the outside, seemed like holiday-making. Quiet little Stratford, flushed with spasmodic life by the arrival of a corps of artillery, tootled on trumpets, and daddy-mammyed on drums; while the horn of the Leamington coach blew lustily every morning and afternoon, and the foxhound puppy at nurse at The Red Horse found the middle of the highway no longer a comfortable place for his after-dinner nap. It was the season of American tourists, doing Stratford and its environs, guide-book in hand, and crowding in to The Red Horse parlour, after luncheon, to see the veritable chair in which Washington Irving used to sit. There came a drowsy sunny noontide when the lovers had no particular employment for their day. They had been reduced to playing billiards directly after breakfast, until Gerald discovered that it was too warm for billiards, whereupon the four players—Lina, Daphne, Gerald, and Turchill—repaired to the garden in search of shade. ‘Shade!’ cried Daphne indignantly. ‘Who wants shade? Who could ever have too much of Phœbus Apollo? Not I. We see too little of his godlike countenance, and I will never turn my back upon him.’ She seated herself on the burnt grass in the full blaze of the sun, while the other three sat in the shadow of an immense Spanish chestnut, which grew wide and low, making a leafy tent. ‘This is a horrid idle way of spending one’s day,’ said Daphne, jumping up with sudden impatience, after they had all sat for half an hour talking lazily of the weather and their neighbours. ‘Is there nothing for us to do?’ ‘Yes, you excitable young person,’ answered Gerald; ‘since your restless temper won’t let us be comfortable here, we’ll make you exert yourself elsewhere. The river is the only place where life can be tolerable upon such a day as this. The nicest thing would be to be in it: the next best thing perhaps is to be on it. You shall row us to Stratford Weir, Miss Daphne.’ ‘I should like it of all things. I am dying for something to do,’ responded Daphne, brightening. ‘You’ll take an oar, won’t you, Edgar?’