She began to form social plans. She would be exclusive, yet catholic, like Aunt Sophy. Jethro must let her have another servant--that would be three. The wagonette must be done up, and she’d try for a Battlesden car like Furlonger’s. She’d aim at culture, too--a Browning class, in opposition to Mrs. McAlpine’s Shakspere. There wouldn’t be so many expurgations necessary. The members of the Shakspere class had neatly written slips sent them with a list of passages to be slurred. She would like to take a rise out of Mrs. McAlpine, who lived in a cottage, but gave herself tremendous airs because she was a J. P.’s daughter, and had instituted afternoon tea with cucumber or cress sandwiches. In the afternoon she slipped on her things and went to the Buttery, the ancient cottage where the absentee journalist’s wife lived with a small maid. Mrs. Clutton had become her most confidential friend. She didn’t mean to mention her engagement, but she was twitching with excitement, dragged here and there with emotions of very different sorts. She went across the common in the March sun and wind. Her heart and feet danced, but her face was like the changing sky. Forget! She must forget. She was to marry Jethro. It was so easy to say forget, so difficult to do it. Once she stopped, her eyes strained in the direction of London--far away over moor and hill and sleek pasture. She groaned aloud. She knew that she would give it all--greenhouse, Battlesden, big, fond man with the bulging bag of sovereigns--for one touch on the mouth from one other man. _He_ was still in prison, still only a number behind the high wall. When he came out? Emigration or the army. But that was not her affair. When she reached the Buttery she went through the high green trellis door into the garden, sure of finding her hostess there on such a day, at such a season. It was a fair-sized garden in apple-pie order. The long borders were gay. At one end were substantial pig-sties. In them Mrs. Clutton kept fowls. She was leaning over the wall, her elbows spread out on the wire netting which was nailed across to keep the birds from flying over. She came running excitedly along the neat asphalt path. In one hand she held an egg. It was evidently only just laid. It hardened as the air touched it.