"Yes," say I, having on the other hand fully recovered my good-humor, "a good while--that is, not very long--three, four, three whole days." "Do you call that a _good while_?" "It seems more," reply I, looking frankly back at him in the lamplight, and thinking that he cannot be much older than Algy, and that, in consequence, it is rather a comfort not to be obliged to feel the slightest respect for him. "And how long have you been abroad altogether?" We have reached the flower-lamps. We are standing by the bed in which they are supposed to grow. There are half a dozen of them: a fuchsia, a convolvulus, lilies. "I do not think much of them," say I, disparagingly, kneeling down to examine them. "What a villainous rose! It is like an _artichoke_!" "I told you you would not like them," he says, not looking at the flowers, but switching a little stick nonchalantly about; then, after a moment: "How long did you say you had been abroad?" "You asked me that before," reply I, sharply, rising from my knees, and discovering that the evening grass has left a disfiguring green trace on my smart _trousseau_ gown. "Yes, and you did not give me any answer," he replies, with equal sharpness. "Because I cannot for the life of me recollect," reply I, looking up for inspiration to the stars, which the great bright lamps make look small and pale. "I must do a sum: what day of the month is this?--the 31st? Oh, thanks, so it is; and we were married on the 20th. It is ten days, then. Oh, it _must_ be more--it seems like ten _months_." I am looking him full in the face as I say this, and I see a curious, and to me _puzzling_, expression of inquiry and laughter in the shady darkness of his eyes. "Has the time seemed so long to you, then?" "No," reply I, reddening with vexation at my own _bêtise_; "that is--yes--because we have been to so many places, and seen so many things--any one would understand _that_." "And when do you go home?" "In less than three weeks now," I reply, in an alert, or rather joyful tone; "at least I hope so--I mean" (again correcting myself)--"I _think_ so." Somehow I feel dissatisfied with my own explanations, and recommence: "The boys--that is, my brothers--will soon be scattered to the ends of the earth; Algy has got his commission, and Bobby will soon be sent to a foreign station--he is in the navy, you will understand; and so we all want to be together once again before they go." "You are not going home _really_, then?" inquires my companion, with a slight shade of disappointment in his tone; "not to _Tempest_--that is?" "What a number of questions you do ask!" say I, impatiently. "Of what possible interest can it be to you where we are going?" "Only that I shall be your nearest neighbor," replies he, stiffly; "and, as Sir Roger has hardly ever been down hitherto, I am rather tired of living next an empty house."