"I'm so fond of wild flowers, you know," he said. "I want all the children who collected them to have a shilling from me, besides their prizes. Wyn shall give them away." So the dozen or so of children who had competed were called up and named, and Alwyn gave Wyn the shillings to distribute as they bowed and curtsied and smiled at Mr Edgar. Then Alwyn said that that was enough and he must come home, and Wyn led the pony back across the turf, while Alwyn walked beside it, looking sad and anxious, bright as the day should have been for him. Before he was lifted out of the chair, Edgar called Wyn up to him and took his little red fist in his long white fingers. "I've liked my drive very much," he said. "Take care of old Dobbles." Wyn could not speak a word, and when Edgar had been carried away, and he had led the pony safely out of sight, he suddenly flung his arms round Dobbles' neck and burst into a passion of tears; for he knew, as well as if any one had told him, that all their long pleasant days were over, and that he would never take Mr Edgar out again. He could not go back to the tent, to the tea that was to come, and the merry-making. He sat on the straw in Dobbles' stable and cried as if his heart would break. Here he was discovered by Alwyn, who had come to fulfil his father's wish, by looking at the horses. Wyn jumped up in a hurry and feigned to be absorbed in the contents of Dobbles' manger. Alwyn, although he saw pretty well what was amiss, did not want to face the boy's grief just then, so he only patted Dobbles, and said that Mr Edgar was resting comfortably and did not seem overtired, and that Wyn had better go and play cricket and come up to-morrow to tell him how many runs he had made. The half-realised fears of youth are easily soothed by cheerful words from an elder. Wyn, partly perhaps from Edgar's influence and theoretical instructions, was an excellent cricketer for his age and station, and now went off quite cheerfully to share in the game; and as the boys, and indeed all the village, were much fuller of the discovery of the jewels than of Mr Edgar or of anything else, the flower show and fete concluded joyously. Florence remained at the Lodge that night to see her relations, and as she walked back with Harry from the station after seeing them off by the last train for Rapley, he had a long talk with her, and told her, being an outspoken person, a good deal about his own history, and of his feelings when he had contemplated his returning. "I'd never have got over it, Florrie," he said, "if father hadn't been there to make it up." He did not lecture Florrie nor allude to any of her misdemeanours, but somehow the tone he took influenced her and made her feel that the results of sauciness and defiance were not matters to be laughed at. CHAPTER TWENTY TWO. WILD FLOWERS.