At dusk began the fun of the harvest-home. Mrs. Cramp's labourers and their wives sat in the large kitchen at an abundant board. Hot beef, mutton and hams crowded it, with vegetables; and of fruit pies and tarts there was a goodly show. Some of us helped to wait on them, and that was the best fun of all. They had all taken as much as they could possibly eat, and were in the full flow of cider and beer and delight; a young man in a clean white smock-frock was sheepishly indulging the table with a song: "Young Roger of the Valley," and I was laughing till I had to hold my sides; when Mrs. Cramp touched me on the back. She sat with the Miss Dennets in the little parlour off the kitchen, in full view of the company. I sat on the door-sill between them. "Johnny," she whispered, "I don't see Juliet and Cherry Dawson. Have they been in at all?" I did not remember to have seen them; or Fred Scott either. "Just go out and look for the two girls, will you, Johnny. It's too late for them to be out, though it is a warm night. Tell them I say they are to come in at once," said Mrs. Cramp. Not half a stone's throw from the house I found them--quarrelling. Their noisy voices guided me. A brilliant moon lighted up the scene. The young ladies were taunting one another; Juliet in frantic passion; Cherry in sarcastic mockery. Fred Scott, after trying in vain to throw oil upon the troubled waters, had given it up as hopeless, and stood leaning against a tree in silent patience. "It's quite true," Cherry was saying tauntingly when I got up. "We _are_ engaged. We shall be married shortly. Come!" "You are not," raved Juliet, her voice trembling with the intense rage she was in. "He was engaged to me before you came here; he is engaged to me still." Cherry laughed out in mockery. "Dear me! old maids do deceive themselves so!" Very hard, that, and Juliet winced. She was five or six years older than the fairy. How Fred relished the bringing home to him of his sins, I leave you to judge. "I say, can't you have done with this, you silly girls?" he cried out meekly. "In a short time you'll have our wedding-cards," went on Cherry. "It's all arranged. He's only waiting for me to decide whether it shall take place here or at Gretna Green." Juliet dashed round to face Fred Scott. "If this be true; if you do behave in this false way to me, I'll not survive it," she said, hardly able to bring the words out in her storm of passion. "Do you hear me? I'll not live to see it, I say; and my ghost shall haunt her for her whole life after." "Come now, easy, Juliet," pleaded Fred uncomfortably. "It's all nonsense, you know." "I think it is; I think she is saying this to aggravate me," assented Juliet, subsiding to a sort of calmness. "If not, take you warning, Cherry Dawson, for I'll keep my word. My apparition shall haunt you for ever and ever." "It had better begin to-night, then, for you'll soon find out that it's as true as gospel," retorted Cherry.