"Me!" cried Miss Ruth. "Bless your dear heart, he ’d up and run away. He ’s that shy a body can’t look at him but he wants to hide in a cupboard. He ’s got it into his silly head he is n’t good enough. As if anybody’d notice his shoulder!" "Perhaps," said Marjolaine, pensively, "if Barbara showed him she liked him—Why don’t you speak to her? Sympathetically." "So I did, just now. Told her she was an idiot. What did she do? She burst out crying, and went and shut herself up with that parrot." "Ah!" sighed Marjolaine, with a pathetic look at the Gazebo, where she had been so happy so short a time, so long ago, "Ah, yes! The old love!" How well she understood! "Old frying-pan!" cried Ruth. "Ruth!" exclaimed Marjolaine, deeply shocked. "The poor parrot." "Oh, that bird!—Marjory!" said Ruth, firmly, as if the time had come to utter a bitter but necessary truth at all costs, "Marjory, there are times when I ’d give anybody a two-penny bit to wring that bird’s neck!" But Marjolaine had not been listening to her. The mention of the parrot had set her thoughts working; her face suddenly lighted up with the inspired look of one who has just conceived an epoch-making idea. "Ruth!" she cried, running up to her. Ruth naturally thought she was shocked. "Well, I don’t care! I mean it. If it was n’t for that bird—" But Marjolaine had snatched Ruth’s needlework away and was trying to drag her from the seat by both hands. "I was n’t thinking of the bird! Yes, I was thinking of the bird, but I was n’t thinking what you thought I was thinking. Oh! what nonsense you make me talk!" "Whatever’s got into the child’s head?" cried Miss Ruth, swept off her feet. "Come!" insisted Marjolaine. "Quick! Come, and tell Barbara I want her." "What do you want her for?" asked Miss Ruth, struggling. "I must n’t tell you yet, she may refuse." "Bless us and save us!" cried Miss Ruth, now on her feet, and struck by the change in Marjolaine’s appearance, "now your cheeks are glowing again!" "Maman said they would!" laughed Marjolaine. Positively, for the moment she had forgotten her sorrows. "Come along!" "Wait! My mouth ’s full of pins!" Seeing the two ladies under the tree, Sir Peter Antrobus had come out, anxious for a little conversation. He was much disappointed when he observed they were leaving the lawn. "Going in, just as I’m coming out?" said he, reproachfully. "Yes," laughed Marjolaine on the top step, and looking up at the threatening sky, "like the little people in the weather cottages: you come out for the rain; and I go in for the sunshine." Which, of course was extremely inaccurate, but the correct statement would have spoiled her meaning entirely. "How are the peas coming on, Admiral?" asked Miss Ruth, for the sake of politeness. Sir Peter’s temper was already ruffled by the disappointment of his sociable intentions. Now he burst out, "How the doose can they come on, Ma’am, when that everlasting cat roots ’em up every night?"