CHAPTER XXI I suppose that we all know summers and summers and—The Summer—the one summer into which, for whatever reason, all the forgotten others pour their glories, so that for ever it glows in our minds, an Eden of sun and strawberries and roses and a frock—that was a pretty frock!—and remembered sentences that still speak themselves in our ears in a remembered voice—a summer of immortal little things—a joke, a glance, a daisy-chain, a head turning quickly, an afternoon in the hay. The other summers are well enough, but their flowers, every primrose and poppy of them, open in their seasons and not all at once: and they are soon over. It rains for days in other summers. But in The Summer—— “Oh, no, it never rained,” Laura would tell you. “I know, because I remember. I was out of doors with Justin all day long.” “What about meals?” You may ask her that if you like. She will only look at you pityingly. “What did you do all day long?” “We walked—and talked——” “What about?” “Oh, I don’t know. It was a lovely summer——” Justin would agree, I think. It was The Summer for him also, the summer which justified him in calling his eggs “The Collection,” the summer when he had not minded asking Bellew down to have a look at it, the summer of lucky finds and Laura’s idea—Bellew had been very struck with Laura and her method of labelling—of collecting by counties.... The Kent section had been practically completed that summer ... the same summer, by the way, that he and Laura got engaged.... The chill New Year found him still regretting The Summer, and suffering from his usual intellectual bilious attack; for the year began with him on St. Valentine’s Day, and he could only get through the long winter evenings by over-reading himself like a literary Jack Horner home for the holidays. He grew at last so tired of himself and Brackenhurst that he began to talk, to the amazed delight of his mother, of a house-party (“and Justin, you know, has never cared for young people!”) But Mrs. Cloud’s joyous— “Now, whom could we have? Your cousins in York? Rhoda and Lucy, of course. The Browns? the Jones’? the Robinsons?” made no impression. Justin, it appeared, had been thinking of—Bellew, perhaps? Laura might come across for a night or two. And Oliver. He hadn’t heard from Oliver for months. He ought to get Oliver down. “Oh! Oh, very well,” said Mrs. Cloud. But Oliver (and somehow it shocked Laura) Oliver had married a wife. He wrote from Chelsea to Justin, wisely, humorously, as from age to heady youth, and could not possibly come. Justin must come up to them instead. Laura, confronted with the letter and a “What do you think of that?” wondered aloud that he did not sign it _Paterfamilias_. But wasn’t it typical of Oliver? Justin, distinctly disillusioned, said— “Was it? How?” “Oh, well, you know, I always _did_ think——”