She let herself be greeted by the strangers with much more ease and grace than the other two children, but the slow walk of her grandfather and Colonel Brownlow seemed more than she could brook, and she went off, flying and spinning round like a little dog. While all the acknowledgments and farewells were being made, and Colonel Brownlow was taking directions for finding Higg’s house and forge so as to remunerate him for his services, Elfie came hurrying up to Allen, holding out a great, gorgeous pink-lined shell, and laid within it two heads of scarlet geranium on a green leaf. “O Elfie, Elfie! how could you?” exclaimed he, knowing them to be the only flowers in bloom. “You must have them. There’s nothing else pretty to give you, and I love you,” said the child, holding up her face to kiss him. “Elvira!” said her aunt in warning, “how can you! What will this lady think of you?” Elvira’s gesture would in any other child have seemed a sulky thrust of the elbow, but in her it was more like the flutter of the wing of a brilliant bird. “You must,” she repeated; and when he hesitated with “If Mrs. Gould,” she broke away, dashed the flowers, shell and all, into the middle of a clump of rosemary, and rushed out of sight like a little fury. “You will excuse her, Mrs. Brownlow,” said Mrs. Gould, much annoyed. “She has been sadly spoilt, living among negro servants and having her own way, so that she is sometimes quite ungovernable.” “Nay, nay, she is a warm-hearted little thing if you don’t cross her,” said the old farmer; “and the young gentleman has been very kind to her.” Mrs. Gould looked as if she thought she knew her niece better than grandpapa did, but she was too wise to speak; and the little girls, having assisted Allen in the recovery of the shell and the flowers, he tendered them again to her. “You had better keep them, Mr. Brownlow,” she said. “The shell is her own, and if you did not take it she is so _tenacious_ that she would be sure to smash it to atoms.” Allen accepted perforce and proceeded with his farewells, but as he was stooping down to kiss little five-year-old Kate Gould, something wet, cold, and sloppy came with great force on them both, almost knocking them down and bespattering them both with black drops. The missile proved to be a dripping sod pulled up from the duck-pond in the next field, and a glimpse might be caught of Elvira’s scarlet legs disappearing over the low wall between.