“You will not have to meet my father until you please,” she said. “Just now he is miles away--at Galsworthy. We shall be alone.” “I’ll not shudder at the prospect,” said he. “We can’t have everything in this world, can we?” They went together up the lane to the farm with as much decorum as was consistent with the possibility of being discovered by some watcher in the fields, and they had breakfast face to face at an old Tudor table in one of the panelled rooms of the farmhouse, and beneath the old oak beams--a lovely room that had undergone no change in even the most trifling detail for three hundred years. The bowls of wallflowers on the table and on the lattice shelf were of blue delft, and the plate-rack on the wall held some dishes of the same colour. “You suppose all this is old?” he said, looking around. “Oh, no; but it wasn’t bought in my lifetime,” she replied. “I can show you in an account book exactly what was paid for everything. The date of the last entry in the book is the ‘Eve of the Feast of the Purification, 1604.’” “Three hundred years ago. But that’s nothing in the history of your family. Have you a ledger that goes back to the Heptarchy?” “I’m afraid that that one is mislaid. But the eggs are fresh; if we don’t boil them now they will be three hours old at nine.” “You might have some relic of the Heptarchy, Priscilla.” “Alas! nothing remains from that date except our name.” “And yet you are content to submerge it in the mushroom-growth Wingfield? Have you no reverence for the past?” “Just now I confess that I am thinking more of the future. Oh, the future, Jack, my boy--the future!” She laid a hand upon his shoulder and stood in front of him in the attitude of a true comrade. “My pal!” he cried, taking the note from her. “My pal, was there ever a time when we didn’t know each other?” CHAPTER XIX ONLY one stipulation will I make, my dearest, and that is that we shall not be married in a church.” He was taken somewhat aback when she said this--they were sitting together among the apple blossoms of the orchard. She fancied that she felt his hand loosen slightly on hers at the moment; but it might only have been fancy. “I thought that women always went it blind for the church and ‘The Voice that breathed o’er Eden,’ with the Wedding March to follow,” said he. “They do. I believe that there are dozens of girls who get married solely for the sake of the ceremony,” she replied. “And I can swear that there are thousands of men who will have nothing to do with it simply on account of the ceremony,” said he. “If there was none of that nonsense of carriages and clergymen and top hats and a new frock coat, the marriage-rate would soon go up instead of down. What has the parson to do with the thing any way?”