“This is luck,” said Jack; “I have not seen you for two whole days, except at the window, which doesn’t count. I don’t know how we managed to endure the dullness before that window came to be inhabited. Come this way a little, under the chestnuts--you have the sun in your eyes.” “Oh, I don’t mind,” said Pamela, “and I must not wait; I am going home.” “I suppose you have been walking with Sara, and she has left you to go home alone,” said Jack; “it is like her. She never thinks of any thing. But tell me what you have been doing these two frightfully long days?” From which it will be seen that Mr. John, as well as his sister, had made a little progress toward intimacy since he became first acquainted with the lodgers at Mrs. Swayne’s. “I don’t think they have been frightfully long days,” said Pamela, making the least little timid response to his emphasis and to his eyes--wrong, no doubt, but almost inevitable. “I have been doing nothing more than usual; mamma has wanted me, that’s all.” “Then it is too bad of mamma,” said Jack; “you know you ought to be out every day. I must come and talk to her about it--air and exercise, you know.” “But you are not a doctor,” said Pamela, with a soft ring of laughter--not that he was witty, but that the poor child was happy, and showed it in spite of herself; for Mr. John had turned, and was walking down the avenue, very slowly, pausing almost every minute, and not at all like a man who was going home to dinner. He was still young. I suppose that was why he preferred Pamela to the more momentous fact which was in course of preparation at the great house. “I am a little of every thing,” he said; “I should like to go out to Australia, and get a farm, and keep sheep. Don’t you like the old stories and the old pictures with the shepherdesses? If you had a little hut all covered with flowers, and a crook with ribbons--” “Oh, but I should not like to be a shepherdess,” cried Pamela, in haste. “Shouldn’t you? Well, I did not mean that; but to go out into the bush, or the backwoods, or whatever they call it, and do every thing and get every thing for one’s self. Shouldn’t you like that? Better than all the nonsense and all the ceremony here,” said Jack, bending down to see under the shade of her hat, which as it happened was difficult enough. “_We_ don’t have much ceremony,” said Pamela, “but if I was a lady like your sister--”