"It's fine moonlight," said the boys, who, seeing that they and every one had ceased eating, were impatient to be out again. "Come, Mr. Parker, we'll show you the echo: Mr. Forrester, come." "I'll go too," said Mrs. Parker; and they all went but the Rose, who stayed behind for a little to direct about household matters. The echo was a favorite with the boys, it gave such unlimited scope to their powers of shouting: it was the _sight_ they most enjoyed exhibiting to strangers. And it was an echo that could repeat every word of a sentence with such perfection that it was difficult to believe that it was not a human being shouting back from the other side of the park, where stood some houses inhabited by the farm-servants and their families. "Hallo, Abbot John! is that you?" shouted one of the boys, and the other cried, "Yes, I'm taking a walk," so quickly that the one sentence seemed the answer to the other, and both came back loud and distinct on the still night-air. "Are the Ormistons ancient? It's all fudge," shouted John. "Well," said Mr. Parker, "that's the most perfect echo I ever heard. I've no doubt the holy fathers of the Middle Ages knew of it, and used it in some shape to keep the superstitious people in awe." "It is awesome," said his wife, "here in the moonlight, with the old castle so near: if I were alone, positively I should feel eerie." "Are you dull at home, Mr. Forrester?" was sent out from the depths of Will's chest, and sent back again just as Bessie came out and joined the party. "Boys! boys!" she said, "don't be foolish." "Why, it was what you said yourself," her sister remarked. "_Are_ you ever dull?" the lad shouted again. "Often," answered Edwin, and "Often" came back instantly. "In that case, Mr. Forrester," said Mrs. Parker, "why don't you get a wife? There's no company for a young man like a good wife. Here's Miss Ormiston; I don't think you could do better." Think of the delicate wound of these young people being thus openly probed in broad moonlight in the presence of so many people! What could Mrs. Parker be thinking of? Not of her own love-passages surely, or, if she was, they must have been of a blunter order than those of the Rose and her lover. "Oh no," said Bessie in cool, indifferent tones: "Mr. Forrester knows better than that." "There!" said Edwin, "you see, Mrs. Parker, I have been refused." "'Faint heart never won fair lady,'" said Mrs. Parker.