To this day Dolly remembers the light of a certain afternoon in May when all was hot and silent and sleepy in the school-room at Church House. The boards cracked, the dust-moats floated; down below, the garden burnt with that first summer glow of heat that makes a new world out of such old, well-worn materials as twigs, clouds, birds, and the human beings all round us. The little girls had been at work, and practised, and multiplied, and divided again; they had recollected various facts connected with the reign of Richard the Second. Mademoiselle had suppressed many a yawn, Dolly was droning over her sum--six and five made thirteen--over and over again. 'That I should have been, that thou shouldst have been, that he shouldst have been,' drawled poor little Rhoda. Then a great fly hums by, as the door opens, and Lady Sarah appears with a zigzag of sunlight shooting in from the passage--a ray of hope. Lady Sarah has her bonnet on, and a sort of put-away-your-lessons-children face. Is there any happiness like that escape on a summer's day from the dull struggle with vacuity, brown paper-covered books, dates, ink-blots, cramps, and crotchets, into the open air of birds, sounds, flowers, liberty everywhere? As the children come out into the garden with Lady Sarah, two butterflies are flitting along the terrace. The Spanish jessamine has flowered in the night, and spreads its branches out fragrant with its golden drops. Lady Sarah gathers a sprig and opens her parasol. She is carrying a book and a shawl, and is actually smiling. The pigeons go whirring up and down from their pigeon-cote high up in the air. Four o'clock comes sounding across the ivy-wall, the notes strike mellow and distinct above the hum of human insects out and about. Half Lady Sarah's district is sunning itself on the door-steps, children are squatting in the middle of the road. The benches are full in Kensington Gardens, so are the steamers on the river. To these people walking in their garden there comes the creaking sound of a large wheelbarrow, and at the turn of the path they discover Mr. Penfold superintending a boy and a load of gravel. Mr. Penfold is a cheerful little man, with gloomy views of human nature. According to Penfold's account there were those (whoever they might be) who was always a plotting against you. They was hup to everything, and there was no saying what they was not at the bottom of. But Penfold could be heven with them, and he kep' hisself to hisself, and named no names. Dolly felt grateful to these unknown beings when she heard Mr. Penfold telling Lady Sarah they had said as how that Miss Dorothea 'ad been makin' hinquiry respectin' of some puppies. He did not know as how she wished it generally know'd, but he might mention as he 'ad two nice pups down at his place, and Miss Dorothea was welcome to take her choice.