"Eve, my darling! Adam, my love! go and shake hands' with your little visitors," said Lady George, keeping an apprehensive eye on Blazes, who, with his legs very far apart, was clacking the whip he had brought down with him, and making extraordinary cluckings in the roof of his mouth, like a whole bevy of broody hens, in which occupation, what with his close-cropped hair and white smock, he looked a carter to the life. "Really, nurse!" she continued nervously; "I think, perhaps, it would be better. He is so much younger than the others, you see, Lady Hooker." But nurse was not to be put off with this subterfuge, and as she happened to be keeping company with the carrier, she felt outraged by the palpable suspicion. "Indeed, your ladyship," she said, in an indignant whisper, "it is only the man as drives the ferry cart, and 'e is most respectable!" So it appeared, for beyond the usual "_ger'up_" Blasius' vocabulary was, if anything, too endearing. So much so, that Lady George suggested that since the children had had their tea, she thought it would be nice for them to play on the lawn. She would ring for the nursemaid to keep an eye on them, not that it would be necessary, since she could trust darling Adam and Eve not to get into mischief anywhere--out of Paradise. But here a difficulty presented itself. One little girl, a very pretty child dressed in white serge and fur, refused to go, and stood burying her face in the window curtain, and digging the toe of one shoe into the carpet after the manner of children who have made up their minds to give trouble. "She isn't my girl," came Lady Hooker's loud voice. "Sir Joseph wouldn't tolerate that sort of thing, he is so particular. When we had the Duke's place in Sutherland----" "Cressida, my sweet!" said the authoress, plaintively; "if you can possibly wish to go, do wish; it would be so much more convenient for dear little mother. I never coerce her, on principle, Lady George--she is the only tie I have to life." "Separated from her husband," put in Mrs. Vane's next-door neighbour, in the same self-complacent whisper. "It is quite the proper thing when you write, you know." "That is what Lady George says also," broke in Mrs. Woodward, a little spitefully. "And I tell her that children were made to obey their parents----" "Should be made to obey them, you mean, dear Mrs. Woodward," interrupted her hostess, rising to the bait; "but, as I say, it depends upon experience. You may have found it necessary with--with yours, but mine----" "And mine also!" broke in the lady who wrote, enthusiastically. "Cressida's mind is so beautiful in its intense naturalness, so delicate in texture. It is the instinctive shyness of a sensitive organism which----" She started, and turned round, for a loud, full, yet childish voice rose confidently above her words. "Blazeth' goin' to kiss the little gurl, then she won't be flighted, but come along o' Blazeths."