“You shall tell me about it when you come back. I shall like to hear how her face lights up when she hears the good news,” he says with a half-sarcastic smile; then, seeing the girl wince a little at this hitting of a nail all too soundly on the head, he laughs it off pleasantly. “Tell her, as you told me, that it was ‘bound to come.’” “Mine was certainly a very original way of accepting an offer,” replies Lavinia, slightly flushing. Never since the decisive day has she felt quite at her ease with Rupert, and so goes off laughing too; but the laugh disappears as soon as she is out of sight. The day is full of hard spring light, which shows up, among other revelations, the emptiness of the Rectory drawing-room, with its usual refined litter of needlework and open books, and the figures of the children in the chicken-yard, whither a spirit of search and inquiry leads Lavinia’s feet. From her friend’s young family she hears that their mother has gone up the village to bandage a cut hand; but it is with difficulty that this information is extracted from them, so vociferously preoccupied are they with their own affairs. Gloriously happy, covered with mud, hatless, dishevelled, blissful, speaking all at once, they reveal to her, in shouting unison, the solid grounds for their elation--nurse gone off at a moment’s notice, governess’s return indefinitely postponed, mother busy, father absent! “Oh, Lavy, we _are_ having such a good time, particularly at tea! Serena has tea with us.” Serena’s age is two years, and detractors say that her Christian name must have been bestowed with an ironical intention. “And no doubt you spoil her very much?” “No,” thoughtfully; “we do not spoil her. We only try to make her as naughty as we can.” Their visitor smiles at the nice distinction, and weakly shrinking from pointing out the immorality of the course of conduct described, judiciously changes the topic by asking why the flag on the henhouse is flying half-mast high. She is at once informed by grave voices that there has been a court-martial, and that General Forestier Walker is to have his neck wrung for breaking his eggs. “General ---- was the presiding judge,” says Phillida, pointing to a peaceable-looking white Dorking matron, making the gravel fly behind her with the backward sweep of her scratching feet. “He is Féo Prince’s general. She told me, last time she was here, that she had asked him to marry her.” “As if he would be thinking of such tommy-rot as marriage now!” cries Chris, more struck, apparently, by the ill-timing of the overture than its indelicacy. “Miss Brine was shocked,” says Phillida, thoughtfully. “She said that it was putting the cart before the horse, and that Féo ought to have waited for him to speak first.” “But if he wouldn’t?” cries little Daphne, swinging Lavinia’s hand, which she has annexed, to and fro, and staring up with the puzzled violet of her round eyes. They all laugh.