"What a long house Romney is!" said Eve, looking back. She did not add, "And if you drop anything on the floor at one end it shakes the other." "Yes, it's large," Cicely answered. She perceived no fault in it. "And the name; you know there's a Romney in Kent?" "Is there?" "And your post-office, too; when I think of your Warwick, with its one wooden house, those spectral white sand-hills, the wind, and the tall light-house, and then when I recall the English Warwick, with its small, closely built streets, and the great castle looking down into the river Avon, I wonder if the first-comers here didn't feel lost sometimes. All the rivers in central England, put together, would be drowned out of sight in that great yellow stream of yours over there." But Cicely's imagination took no flight towards the first-comers, nor towards the English rivers; and, in another moment, Eve's had come hastily homeward, for little Jack coughed. "He is taking cold!" she exclaimed. "Let us go back." "It's a splendid day; he will take no cold," Cicely answered. "But we will go back if you wish." She watched Eve fold a shawl round the little boy. "You ought to have a child of your own, Eve," she said, with her odd little laugh. "And you ought never to have had one," Eve responded. As they drew near the landing, they perceived Miss Sabrina on the bank. "She has on her bonnet! Where can she be going?" said Cicely. "Oh, I know; she will ask you to row to Singleton Island, to return Mrs. Singleton's call." "But Jack looks so pale--" "You're too funny, Eve! How do you suppose we have taken care of him all this time--before you came?" Eve's tone was often abrupt, but Cicely's was never that; the worst you could say of it was that its sweetness was sometimes mocking. When they reached the landing, Miss Sabrina proposed her visit; "that is, if you care to go, my dear. Dilsey told me that she saw you coming back, so I put on my bonnet on the chance." "Eve is going," remarked Cicely, stepping from the boat; "she wants to see Rupert, he is such a sweet little boy." Dilsey took Jack, and presently Miss Sabrina and her guest were floating northward. Eve longed to put her triumph into words: "The baby is mine! In the spring I am to have him." But she refrained. "When does your spring begin?" she asked. "In February?" "In March, rather," answered Miss Sabrina. "Before that it is dangerous to make changes; I myself have never been one to put on thin dresses with the pinguiculas." "What are pinguiculas?--Birds?" "They are flowers," responded Miss Sabrina, mildly. "It will be six weeks, then; to-day is the fifteenth." "Six weeks to what?" "To March; to spring." "I don't know that it begins on the very first day," remarked Miss Sabrina. "Mine shall!" thought Eve.