'Yes, _Prue_! I was as much surprised as you can be; but it must have been Prue; there was no other unmarried girl there!' Peggy is silent. 'My cousin says it was wonderful how she got her donkeys along! She was at the head of the party; and they were all shouting--shouting at the top of their voices!' Still Margaret makes no comment. 'My cousin says that the whole town turned out to look at them; they were all at their doors and windows. I am sure so should I have been,' with a laugh; 'but it seems a childish romp for grown-up people, does not it?' Peggy's answer is a slight assenting motion of the head, but her words are not ready. Her eyes seem fixed attentively on the distant gambols of the children--on Lily Harborough swarming a cherry-tree, and being pulled down by the leg by an indignant nurse; on Franky giving a covert pull to the end of the white tea table-cloth, in the pious hope of precipitating all the teacups to the ground. 'Another day,' pursues Mrs. Evans cheerfully, 'they drove into the town and bought all the penny tarts at the confectioner's, and pelted one another with them in the open street.' Peggy has at length recovered her speech. 'It was very, _very_ stupid,' she says, in a voice of acute annoyance; 'senseless. But after all there was no great harm in it.' 'Of course one does not know what they did indoors,' rejoins Mrs. Evans, as if, though a good-natured woman, unavoidably anxious to knock even this prop from under our poor Peggy. 'People said--did not they?' turning to her cousin--'that they sat up smoking till all hours of the night, and ran in and out of each other's rooms; and the ladies put things in the men's beds----' 'I am afraid I must be going on,' interrupts Margaret, starting up as if she had been stung; 'I have to see Lady Roupell.' She takes leave abruptly. It seems to her as if she should not be able to draw her breath properly until she is alone. She pants still as she walks on over the stubble fields, across the park, under the September trees, whose green seems all the heavier and deeper for their nigh-coming change of raiment. She pants at the recollection of the picture just drawn for her of her Prue--_her Prue_--shouting, smoking, making apple-pie beds! Her worry of mind must have written itself upon her face, for no sooner has she joined milady, whom she finds out in the shrubberies leaning on her spade, like Hercules upon his club, than the old lady asks sharply what she has been doing to herself. 'Nothing that I know of,' replies Peggy, 'except that I have been rather bothered.' 'Prue, eh?' 'Yes.' 'What about her now?' with a slight accent of impatience. 'She wants to stay away another week.' 'And have you given her leave?' 'I came to ask your advice.' Milady is neatly squirting a plantain or two out of the turf. She waits until she has finished before answering. Then she says with decision: 'Have her back.'