'Oh! there is John Talbot!' cries she, tearing out barefoot into the passage, and flinging herself into his arms. 'I have been praying for you!' cries she, hugging him. 'Miss Lambton said that I might.' At this unexpected colouring given to her reluctant permission Peggy reddens. 'I said that there was no harm in it,' explains Peggy hurriedly; 'there is no _harm_ in praying for any one.' 'And the more they need it the greater charity it is,' replies he, looking at her with so sad and deprecating a humility that her anger against him melts. CHAPTER IX 'God Almighty first planted a Garden. And indeed it is the Purest of Humane pleasures. It is the Greatest Refreshment to the Spirit of Man; Without which Buildings and Pallaces are but Grosse Handy-works: And man shall ever see that when Ages grow to Civility and Elegancie they come to Build Stately, sooner than to Garden Finely: as if Gardening were the Greater Perfection.' I do not know whether Peggy had ever read Bacon, but she certainly endorsed his opinion. 'The garden is the only really satisfactory thing,' she says to herself, three days after that on which she had conducted Miss Harborough's devotions, as she stands beside her carnation-bed, and notes how many fat buds have, during the night, broken into pale sulphur and striped and blood-red flowers. To few of us, I think, has not at one time or other of our lives the doubt presented itself, whether the people we love are not a source of more pain than pleasure to us, what with their misfortunes, their ill-doings, and their deaths. But despite frost, and snail, and fly, and drought, and flood, the joy in a garden must always enormously exceed the pain. The frost may shrivel the young leaves, but the first sun-kiss brings out green successors; the drought may make the tender herbs bow and droop, but at the next warm rain-patter they look up again. The frost that nips our human hearts often no after-sunbeam can uncongeal; and the rain falls too late to revive the flower that the world's cruel drought has killed. 'Did you find out how soon they are going?' asks Prue breathlessly, running down the road to meet her sister on her return from the Manor, in her eagerness to get her tidings. It has been the one thought that has filled her mind during the three hours of Margaret's absence. Peggy shakes her head despondently. 'Milady did not know.' 'I suppose that they had gone out riding before you got there.' This is not a question, so Margaret thinks herself exempted from the necessity of answering it. 'Had they gone out riding before you got there?' repeats Prue, with feverish pertinacity. It _is_ a question now, so she must make some reply. She only shakes her head. 'Then you saw them set off?'--very eagerly. 'How did she look? beautiful, I am sure!' 'I did not see them.' It is a moment before the younger girl takes in what the last sentence implies; then she says in a changed low key: