It is the next day. John Talbot has spent a very happy morning. He is a countryman at heart. Fate has put him into the Foreign Office, and made him a great man's secretary, and tied him by the leg to London for ten months out of the twelve; but the country, whose buttercups brightened his childhood, keeps his heart--the country, with its little larks upsoaring from its brown furrows; with its green and its russet gowns; with its good, sweet, innocent noises, and its heavenly smells. He has been lying on the flat of his back on the sward, with his hands under his head, staring in luxurious idleness up at the sky, and listening to the robin's song--in August scarcely anybody but the redbreast sings--and to the pleasant swish of the wind among the lime-tops. Lying there alone on the flat of his back--that is to say, at first. Afterwards he has plenty of company. Not, indeed, that either his host or his fellow-guests trouble him much. From the lair he has chosen he has a view of his lady's window. It is true that he looks but seldom towards it, nor do its carefully closed casements and drawn curtains hold out much hope of a descent of the sleeping goddess within. Lady Roupell lets it be understood that she does not wish to be seen or spoken to till luncheon; and the rest are dispersed, he neither knows nor cares whither. And yet he has companions. They are in the act of being escorted out to walk by their nurses when they catch sight of him. In an instant they bear down upon him as fast as their fat legs will carry them. 'Just think!' cries Lily, beginning to shout at the top of her voice long before she reaches him--'just think what Franky has been doing! Is not he a naughty boy? He took the water-can and emptied it over Nanny's skirt! She says she will ask mammy to whip him!' 'Which mammy will most certainly decline to do,' says Talbot _sotto voce_ to himself. He has raised himself on his elbow, the more safely to receive their onslaught. He is aware of an idiosyncrasy of Miss Harborough's--that of narrating hideous crimes as having been committed by her little brother, which have in reality been executed by herself. 'If it was Franky who upset the water-can, how is it that it is your frock which is wet?' asks he judicially. She does not answer, beyond putting her head affectedly on one side, and rubbing her shoulder against her ear. 'Are you sure that it was not you, and not Franky?'