“Molly will win of course; but I shall try my best,” said Edgar. The children suited him best on this day of exhilaration when his heart was so foolishly free. He caught the father and mother looking at him, with significant glances to each other, while this conversation was going on, and was bewildered to think what they could mean. What did they mean? It was altogether bewildering and perplexing. The man who attended him that morning had informed him that he had been told off for his especial service, and had looked somewhat offended when Edgar laughed and declared he required no particular tending. “I ’ad my horders, Sir,” said the man. Everybody seemed to have their orders; and if that curious insanity of thought which had assailed him yesterday, a running riot of imagination, for which he did not feel himself to be responsible--if that came back again, tearing open the doors of his heart, and pouring through them, was it his fault? The village lay at the park gates; but villages so near London are not like villages in the depths of the country. This was one where there was a number of smaller gentlefolks, tributaries on all great occasions of Tottenham’s; but when they had a chance, very glad to note any deficiency on the part of the man whom they called a _nouveau riche_, and even a shopkeeper, which was the title of deepest reproach they could think of. Indeed if Mr. Tottenham had not married Lady Mary, I believe he would have had many little pricks and stings from his poor yet well-born neighbours; but a Lady Mary in English village society cannot do wrong. It was a pleasant walk to church, where they all went together, the children walking demurely in honour of Sunday, though Phil’s eye and heart were tempted by the long expanse of white which showed between two lines of green at the right side of the road. “It is hard enough to bear the big town carriage,” he said confidentially to Edgar, “or one of the farmer’s huge carts.”