This brief epistle was handed to Mrs. Turchill just as she was sitting down to luncheon. Her first idea was to strike. Her son might have brought home half-a-dozen of his bachelor friends, and it would have been a pleasure to her to kill fatted calves and put out expensive wines. She would have racked her brain to produce an attractive _menu_, and taxed the resources of poultry-yard and dairy to the uttermost. But to be bidden to prepare a feast for Madoline, who had rejected her paragon son, for the rival who had supplanted him, and for Daphne, whom she most cordially disliked, was something too much. She sat at her simple meal bridling and murmuring to herself in subdued revolt. She was tempted to ring for Deborah and confide her wrongs to that sympathetic ear; but discretion and her very genuine love for her son prevailed; and instead of summoning Deborah, she sent for the cook, and announced the dinner party as cheerfully as if it were the fulfilment of a long-cherished desire. Daphne ran down to the boat-house before the others had finished luncheon, and with Bink’s assistance made her boat a picture of comfort. Gerald was excused from the burden of the basket, as that could be conveyed in the carriage which was to pick up the party at Shottery and take them on to Hawksyard. The old name of the boat had been erased for ever by workmanlike hands the day after Daphne’s futile attempt to obliterate it. ‘Nora Creina’ now appeared in fresh gilding above the deposed emperor. ‘You ought not to have altered it,’ said Gerald. ‘There was something original in calling your boat after a bloodthirsty lunatic. “Nora Creina” is the essence of Cockneyism.’ ‘It was the boat-builder’s suggestion,’ Daphne answered indifferently. ‘What’s in a name?’ ‘True! Your boat by any other name would go as fast.’ Daphne had to wait some time by the water’s edge before the other three came quietly strolling across the meadow. She had been sculling gently up and down under the willows while she waited. ‘Now then, Empress,’ said Gerald, when he had arranged Lina’s shawls, and settled her comfortably in her place, ‘you are to sit beside your sister. Edgar and I will take an oar apiece, while you and Lina amuse ur conversation.’ This nickname of Empress was a reminiscence of Daphne’s adventure in Fontainebleau Forest. It matched very well with her occasional imperiousness, and the association was known only to Gerald Goring and herself. It amused him when he was in a mischievous humour to call her by a name which she never heard without a blush. ‘I thought I was to row you,’ said Daphne.