Aunt Rhoda was not a person to be set at defiance, even by Daphne, who was by no means a tractable spirit. She had said, ‘Come to the Rectory,’ and had said it with such an air of offended dignity that Daphne felt she must obey, and promptly, lest a worse lecture should befall her. So directly after luncheon on the following day she changed her gown, and prepared herself for the distasteful visit. Madoline was going to drive to Warwick with her father, so Daphne would have to perform her penance alone. It was a lovely afternoon in the first week of May, the air balmy and summer-like, the meadows looking their greenest before the golden glory of buttercup time. Yonder in the reedy hollows the first of the marsh marigolds were opening their yellow cups, and smiling up at the yellow sun. The walk to Arden Rectory was something over a mile, and it was as lovely a walk as any one need care to take; through meadows, beside flowery hedgerows, with the river flowing near, but almost hidden by a thick screen of willows; and then by one of the most delightful lanes in the county, a green arcade of old elms, with here a spreading oak, and there a mountain ash, to give variety to the foliage. Daphne set out alone, as soon as she had seen the carriage drive away from the door; but she was not destined to go her way unaccompanied. Half way down the avenue she met Mr. Turchill, strolling at a lazy pace, a cigar in his mouth, and a red setter of Irish pedigree at his heels. At sight of Daphne he threw away his cigar, and took his hands out of his pockets. ‘I was coming up to the Hill to ask somebody to play a game of billiards, and everybody seems going out,’ he said. They had known him so long in an easy-going neighbourly way that he almost took rank as a relation. Daphne, who had spent so much of her life away from home, had naturally seen less of him than anybody else; but as she had been a child during the greater part of their acquaintance, he had fallen into the way of treating her as an elder brother might have done; and he had not yet become impressed with the dignity of her advancing years. For him she was still the Daphne he had romped with in the Christmas holidays, and whose very small pony it had been his particular care to get broken. ‘I met Madoline and Sir Vernon going to Warwick. Why go to Warwick? What is there for anyone but a Cook’s tourist to do in Warwick? But I thought you would be at home. You haven’t a bad notion of billiards, and you might have helped a fellow to while away an afternoon.’ ‘You are like the idle boy in the spelling-book story, wanting someone to play with you,’ said Daphne, laughing at him. He had turned, and was walking beside her, the docile setter following meekly, like a dog who felt that he was of no consequence in the world now that the days of sport were done.