Madge was eager to do so, and was delighted with the place when she got there. It was a small farmstead, picturesque and overgrown with creepers, with a tumble-down old barn that would make an ideal playroom for children on wet days, and a tangled orchard full of gnarled old apple trees just going out of bloom, a duck pond, a nut walk, and fields and copses all round. The house was quaint and fairly roomy, and Madge was enchanted with the flagged kitchen, the dormer windows, and the little odd stairs up and down at every turn. “Oh, Arthur!--it would be a sweet place for them to come to--poor little darlings! I should like to see little Allumette’s face when she was set down at the gate. Michaelmas, did you say? That will be after we are married, and if I had arranged about a woman, we could have a few little things down in October, could we not? The nuts would be ripe then, and you know how lovely the trees are through October. And on wet days there would be the old barn. It would be delightful, would it not, Arthur? And for little children from London no doing up of the house would be needed. It would be better not too spick and span. Just a few beds and chairs and tables. Oh, I could see to everything like that, and tell little Allumette that she should be the first visitor. Perhaps I would let her introduce me to some friends of hers, and bring them all down together.” Madge was so full of delight with her new scheme that she could talk of nothing else all the evening with Eva and Cora. They were both quite pleased and interested in the plan. “But I thought you half promised little Allumette a country holiday this summer,” said Cora. “Won’t she get rather tired of waiting if you put it off till the autumn?” “Oh, but this will be worth waiting for; and I haven’t had time to think about the other. I did speak to one or two women in the cottages, but they had children of their own, and didn’t seem to like the idea of a strange London child. One can’t wonder at it. People fancy London children bring dirt and disease and other unpleasantnesses. It will be far better to work it oneself on a regular footing.” “Yes, in some ways it will be better. I was only thinking that the child might be disappointed.” “Ah, well, she shall have it made up to her if she is; and she had a nice long happy time at Hampstead which seemed to her quite like a country holiday. I didn’t forget her, but things aren’t just as easy to arrange as one thinks they will be. Besides, I shouldn’t have time here to look after her as I should like. Arthur wants so much of me, and he might not quite care for me to be running off to see little Allumette in a cottage. Men don’t understand that sort of thing!”