I did as I was told; and had passed through the garden-gate, when my eye fell upon Master Richard Knox. He was standing on the grass in the moonlight, near the clump of laurels, silently contorting his small form into cranks and angles, after the gleeful manner of Punch in the show when he has been giving his wife a beating. Knowing that agreeable youth could not keep himself out of mischief if he tried, I made up to him. "Hush--sh--sh!" breathed he, silencing the question on my lips. "What's the sport, Dicky?" "She's with him there, beyond the laurels; they are walking round," he whispered. "Oh my! such fun! I have been peeping at 'em. He has his arm round her waist." Sure enough, at that moment they came into view--Mina and Captain Collinson. Dicky drew back into the shade, as did I. And I, to my very great astonishment, trod upon somebody else's feet, who made, so to say, one of the laurels. "It's only I," breathed Sam Jenkins. "I'm on the watch as well as Dicky. It looks like a case of two loviers, does it not?" The "loviers" were parting. Captain Collinson held her hand between both his to give her his final whisper. Then Mina tripped lightly over the grass and stole in at the glass-doors of the garden-room, while the captain stalked round to the front-entrance and boldly rang, making believe he had only then arrived. "Oh my, _my_!" repeated the enraptured Dicky, "won't I have the pull of her now! She'd better tell tales of me again!" "Is it a case, think you?" asked Sam of me, as we slowly followed in the wake of Mina. "It looks like it," I answered. Janet was singing one of her charming songs, as we stole in at the glass-doors: "Blow, blow, thou wintry wind:" just as she used to sing it in that house in the years gone by. Her voice had not lost its sweetness. Mina stood near the piano now, a thoughtful look upon her flushed face. "Where did you and Dicky go just now, Sam?" Sam turned short round at the query. Charlotte Knox, as she put it, carried suspicion in her low tone. "Where did I and Dicky go?" repeated Sam, rather taken aback. "I--I only stepped out for a stroll in the moonlight. I don't know anything about Dicky." "I saw Dicky run out to the garden first, and you went next," persisted Charlotte, who was just as keen as steel. "Dick, what was there to see? I will give you two helpings of trifle at supper if you tell me." For two helpings of trifle Dick would have sold his birthright. "Such fun!" he cried, beginning to jump. "She was out there with the captain, Lotty: he came to the window here and beckoned to her: I saw him. I dodged them round and round the laurels, and I am pretty nearly sure he kissed her." "Who was?--who did?" But the indignant glow on Lotty's face proved that she scarcely needed to put the question. "That nasty Mina. She took and told that it was me who eat up the big bowl of raspberry cream in the larder to-day; and mother went and believed her!"