“Very cross, Miss Sarah. But now that I catch you alone, by a chance,— for I never had the chance before,—I want to say——” “But I want to hear about the game and your father.” “Well, the long and short is, I think he gets no rest for the game, night nor day. The gentlemen,—the two younger,—are after his own heart; for they have him up early every fine morning, after some sport or other; and he likes, as he says, making up for all the years he has been idle. But, dear me! ’tis at night he makes up most for all the sleep he had all those years. There’s not a bough can rustle, nor a gust moan, but he is up, and out to watch.” “And there has been no cause, lately.—You look sly, as if you thought there soon would be.” “Perhaps you know as much about it as I, Miss Sarah, and perhaps more. But there is no use in disturbing my father’s mind, if you should chance to meet him. Well now, if there be not——Dear me, I suppose I must go! Who would have thought of any gentry sitting reading out of doors to-day!” “Yes: it is Mr. Cranston and Miss Cranston. You must go, Alick.” Alick withdrew within the verge of the wood, and Sarah and Fido advanced to the bench where Richard and Fanny were sitting in the late autumnal sunshine, each with a book, and neither of them reading.—Sarah said that she came to speak to Mr. Cranston, the clergyman; but if he was not at home, she would speak now what she meant to say. Richard was always afraid of the propounding of any matter of business; and was therefore as willing to help her to an interview with James as Fanny was, because she perceived that James was the one whom Sarah wished to see. James had just gone towards the stables, and was coming directly in his gig to take up his sister, whom he was going to drive over to his living. If Sarah went straight from hence towards the stables, she could not miss him. She did not miss him. He was approaching in his gig; and in another minute, notwithstanding an abundance of protestations, blushes and tremors, Sarah filled Miss Cranston’s place in the vehicle, and a circuitous road was found to the park gates, by which another sight of the reading party was avoided. James never used any ceremony with his sister; he declared she had a sort of pride in not keeping her appointments; so she was fair game. Ten to one, too, that she preferred dawdling with Richard till dinner-time; and Sarah could say what she wanted much better in the gig; and, besides, James had always wished to show her the house he was building, and to see how she liked it; and there could not be a better opportunity than now.