“Come, Dudley,” he said, “we are not going to quarrel over trifles, are we? I meant no offence, and am sorry if you have taken any. I have knocked about the world too much to be as mealy-mouthed as most of your acquaintances, but I should be as sorry to vex you, perhaps, as any of them. I am glad you like the papers I have chosen; you will find everything in apple-pie order when you bring up Mrs. Dudley and the children. So your wife is going to try moving Miss Lally? I am glad of it; I believe she will get well in half the time in town.” That was what Heather trusted also; she hoped that some of the great doctors in London would be able to do more for her little girl in a month than the general practitioner at Fifield had effected in five. Every one told her she was doing the wisest thing possible in taking Lally to town! every one was so kind and good! Mrs. Poole Seymour sent her carriage to convey mother and child to the station, and Mr. Plimpton was at Palinsbridge, ready to conduct Lally across the bridge, and deposit her safely in the compartment he had secured for the travellers. Miss Baldwin promised to call upon the girls “very often,” and said she should not “forget to find her way to Lincoln’s Inn when in town;” while Mrs. Raidsford came lumbering over in the great family chariot, and, not to be outdone in neighbourly thoughtfulness and delicate consideration, brought Heather a basket of the worst grapes growing in the Moorlands conservatory, and offered to lend her “one of the footmen,” if he could be of any service in seeing to her luggage. It was fortunate for Heather she had, towards the last, so many people to see, so many things to occupy and distract her mind, or else that parting from Berrie Down, when the spring flowers were budding, when the fresh leaves were clothing all the trees, when the birds were singing on every branch and bough, must almost have broken her heart. She loved the spring-time—that time which always seems more full of hope, and joy, and life, and promise than any other period in the year. It had been her delight, ever since she came to Berrie Down, to watch the buds gradually forming, to peep with the children at the nests, where eggs, speckled, and blue, and white, and green, were covered by birds that rarely took fright at sight, of the familiar faces; to her, the lambing season was the pleasantest of the four—the long, long summer stretched away beyond the spring, and the rich, glowing autumn beyond that, and all these good things were to be had and enjoyed before the winter, with its leafless trees, with its snows and frosts, with its rain and storms, came again to Berrie Down.