'Oh, Miss Lambton, we came last night! How is the fox? I saw Alfred in church. What a lot of freckles he has got! May not I come and see Mink and the kittens? May Franky come too?' asks Lily volubly. 'Of course he may,' replies Peggy kindly, warmly returning the little boy's ardent embrace. 'Why, Franky dear, I have never seen you since you were so ill!--you were very ill, were not you?' 'The doctor thought he was going to die,' answers Lily, officiously replying for her brother before he can set his slower tongue in motion; 'and mammy never took off her clothes for three nights, and father cried; and if Franky had died, I should have had no little brother!' She makes this last statement in a rather triumphant tone, as a fact redounding a good deal to her own credit. 'Why, there is John Talbot!' cries she. 'Franky wanted to go to him in church. Did you ever hear of anything so silly? Now, Franky, who will get to him first?' But as she dishonestly sets off before poor Franky has had time to withdraw his sturdy body and fat legs out of Peggy's embrace, there is not much doubt as to the answer to her question. However, though Franky is the last to arrive, and arrives weeping at his sister's injustice, and crying, 'You nasty thing, you did not start fair!' yet he has, by much, the warmer welcome. Is not one welcomed back from the grave's brink deserving of a closer clasp, of tenderer kisses, than one who has only returned from his daily walk? Franky has quite forgotten--if, indeed, he ever, save through Lily's information, knew--how nearly his curly head had been laid in the dust. But Talbot cannot forget it. 'I wish he would not hug those children,' says Mrs. Evans, _sotto voce_; 'it gives me quite a turn. Well, Fanny,' as one of her own offspring plucks her by the sleeve, 'what is it now? Mr. Allnutt wants to speak to me? Dear me! some one is always wanting to speak to me!' She turns aside reluctantly to interview her parishioner, and Peggy goes on alone. But it can hardly be said to be _tête-à-tête_, or without a chaperone, that she puts her hand in Talbot's under the lime-leaves, young and juicy, stirring in the brisk spring wind. 'Oh, Miss Lambton,' cries Lily, 'may not John Talbot come to the Red House too?' As she speaks the face of the object of her kind patronage falls perceptibly. 'Are you coming to the Red House?' he asks, with a slight accent of disappointment; 'what, both of you?--now?' 'Miss Lambton says we way,' rejoins she, happily innocent of the motive that had prompted her friend's inquiry; 'and we may stay to luncheon, and all afternoon, may not we?' Peggy laughs. 'We will see about that.' 'And John Talbot may come too?' urges Miss Harborough pertinaciously, making play with her eyelashes; 'he would like to come.' 'And stay to luncheon, and all afternoon?' adds Talbot, emphasising his apparently playful suggestion by a long pressure of the hand he has forgotten to drop.