‘You order me to row you down the Avon,’ said Daphne, ‘and I condemn you to a penitential walk to Shottery. You ought by rights to go barefoot, dressed in a white sheet; only I don’t think it would become you.’ ‘It might be too suggestive of the Turkish bath,’ said Gerald. ‘Well, I submit, and if needs be I’ll carry the basket, provided you don’t plague me too much about your poet.’ ‘I move an amendment,’ interposed Edgar. ‘Sir Vernon is to take the chair at Warwick at the Yeomanry dinner, so Miss Lawford is off duty. Let us all go on to Hawksyard and dine with the old mother. It’ll delight her, and it won’t be half bad fun for us. There’ll be the harvest moon to light you home, Madoline, and the drive will be delicious in the cool of the——’ ‘Cockchafers,’ cried Gerald. ‘They are particularly cool at that hour—come banging against one’s nose with ineffable assurance.’ ‘Say you’ll come, Lina,’ pleaded Edgar, ‘and I’ll send one of Sir Vernon’s stable-boys to Hawksyard on my horse with a line to the mater, if I may.’ ‘I should enjoy it immensely—if Gerald likes, and if you are sure Mrs. Turchill would like to have us.’ ‘I think I’d better be out of it. I’m not a favourite with Mrs. Turchill,’ said Daphne bluntly. ‘Oh, Daphne!’ cried Turchill ruefully. ‘Oh, Edgar!’ cried Daphne, mocking him. ‘Can you lay your hand upon your heart, and declare, as an honest man, that your mother likes me?’ ‘Perhaps not quite so much as she will when she knows more of you,’ answers the Squire of Hawksyard, as red as a turkey-cock. ‘The fact is, she so worships Madoline that you are a little thrown into the shade.’ ‘Of course. How could anyone who likes Madoline care about me? It isn’t possible,’ retorted Daphne, with a somewhat bitter laugh. ‘If I were one of a boisterous brood of underbred girls I might have a chance of being considered just endurable; but as Lina’s sister I am as the shadow to the sunlight; I am like the back of a beautiful picture—a square of dirty canvas.’ ‘If you are fishing for compliments, you are wasting trouble,’ said Gerald. ‘It is not a day on which any man will rack his brains in the composition of pretty speeches.’ ‘May I write the note? May I send the boy?’ asked Edgar. Lina looked at her lover, and finding him consentient, consented; whereupon Edgar hurried off, intensely pleased, to make his arrangements.