Mechanically we make for the small belt of trees that encircles and bounds our home, and is by courtesy "our wood." It is my favorite retreat--the spot most dear to me at Summerleas. Ah! how sweet is everything to-day, how fragrant! The primrose gold in its mossy bed, supported by its myriad friends; the pretty purple violet--the white one prettier still. I sigh and look about me sadly. "This is the very last spring I shall ever spend at home," I say, at length, being in one of my sentimental and regretful moods. "Yes," returns Billy; "this time next year, I suppose, you will be holding high court at Strangemore. How funny you will look? you are so small! Why, you will be an out-and-out swell then, Phyllis, and can cut the country if you choose. What are you so doleful about? Ain't you glad?" "No, I am not," I reply emphatically; "I am sorry! I am _wretched!_ Everything will be so new and big and strange, and--_you_ will not be there. Oh, Billy!" flinging my arms around his neck, "I feel _that_ worst of all. I am _too_ fond of you, and that's a fact." "Well, and I am awfully fond of you too," says Billy, giving me a bear-like hug that horribly disarranges my appearance, but is sweet to me, so much do I adore my "boy Billee." We seat ourselves on a grassy knoll and give ourselves up to gloomy foreboding. "It is a beastly nuisance, your getting married at all," says Billy, grumpily. "If it had been Dora, now, it would have been a cause for public rejoicing; but you are different. What I am to do without you in this stupid hole is more than I can tell. I shall get papa to send me to a boarding-school when you go." (The Eton plan has not yet been divulged.) "Why on earth did you take a fancy to that fellow, Phyllis? Were you not very well as you were?" "It was _he_ took a fancy to _me_, if you please. I never thought of such a thing. But there is little use discussing that now. Marry him I must before the year is out; and really, perhaps, after all, I shall be very happy." "Oh, yes, I dare say, if being happy means settling down and having a lot of squalling brats before you can say Jack Robinson. _I_ know how it will be," says Billy, moodily "you will be an old woman before your time." "Indeed I shall not," I cry, with much indignation, viewing with discomfort the ruins to which he has reduced my handsome castle. "I intend to keep young for _ever_ so long. Why, I am only eighteen now, and I shan't be old until I am _thirty_. And, Billy," coaxingly, "you shall see what I shall do for _you_ when I marry him: I will send you to _Eton_. There!" "Why don't you say you will send me to the moon?" replies he, with withering contempt. "But I will really; Marmaduke _says_ I shall; and you are to spend all of your holidays at Strangemore; and I will keep a gun for you, and a dog; and maybe he will let me give you a _horse_."