"There, there. Go and do for yourself, Eustace," said Roland, letting him pass. "And now that we are all here, we can gather round the festive--table-cloth. Assort yourselves, good people, and do it well; if you don't it's your own faults. Stewart, keep an eye on that subaltern of yours, and don't let him have too much champagne, or my wife says you will be held responsible as his superior officer." Captain Stewart--in whose troop Eustace was--and who had run down with him for the occasion--vehemently declined responsibility, and set to work devoting himself to Eva Medlicott, to the no small satisfaction of that young lady. "`Shop!' Bear witness all!" cried Eustace, tossing off his glass with the air of a man who had walked a mile up a steep hill at mid-day. "He's talking arrant `shop.' Roland, old chap, consider yourself fined a case of this same `gooseberry.' Stewart and I will take it up to Town with us to-night." "Nonsense, you're not going to-night," said Olive. "Am. With deep grief I say it--but--`painful necessities,' as the schoolmaster says upon certain occasions! If we miss that train I'm broke. Chief desperately glum--vows I've had four times too much leave already. Isn't that so, Stewart?" "For once, Ingelow, truth and the exigencies of the Service compel me to support your statement," gravely replied the captain, whose attention was divided between his fair companion and the dispensing of a pigeon-pie to many hungry applicants. There was a laugh at this, and then, the contagion spreading, the fun grew apace, and never a merrier party made the grey old ruins ring. It wae a model picnic party, not too large, all fairly well known to each other, or, in the case of an exception or two, acquisitions to any circle, and all young, except perhaps the curate, who was such a thoroughly good-natured man that his quietness--"slowness" we are afraid they called it--was quite forgiven him. Then there were no elderly chaperons to spoil sport with their whisperings and confounded sharp-sightedness, and not even a botanically-minded old maid to drag off some wretched youth to grub up fern-roots for her, when he would fain be wandering _perdu_ in another direction with a very different sample of charmer. The Dorriens had been obliged to defer their foreign trip. Business of all sorts, connected more or less with the property, which could not well be left to others, had kept cropping up in the most vexatious manner since we heard them making their plans nearly two months ago. To Roland these delays had been irritating in the extreme, but now he thought he saw the end of them, and had made up his mind to start early next month. There was one bright side to it all. He had heard no more mysterious hints. These seemed to have ceased since the departure of Johnston, who had left the neighbourhood altogether when summarily dismissed from Cranston.