“You must come,” he said hastily, when the young man pleaded something about “working hard this autumn”; “we won’t take any excuse. The Colonel says he can get you leave, and if, as you say, you’re going to take to writing, why everybody knows you can get better inspiration in the fresh air of the country than you can among the chimney-pots. And you will enjoy yourself, George, I know you will. It isn’t the orthodox big country-house, you know, where you can fancy yourself in London except that it’s duller; we all rough it down there, in a cottage of my own that we’ve enlarged as we wanted. My wife and I play Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, you know. She has fashion and a carpet up here, while I have comfort and a sanded floor in Norfolk. Isn’t it so, Cicely?” he added to his eldest daughter, who had come to lean over her father’s shoulder, and to smile acquiescence in all he said in the prettiest possible manner. “I shall set you girls to persuade him.” Cicely was the one who never had anything to say, and whose dove-like eyes and gentle, quiet manners roused in you a strong anxiety to know what she thought and felt, which nobody had as yet succeeded in discovering. “Set Ella, papa,” said Cicely, beaming as sweetly as ever. “Charlotte and I have no influence; it’s always Ella.” “Ella, come here, you’re wanted,” said her father. And when his youngest daughter had crossed the room obediently, he put his hand on Lauriston’s shoulder, and spoke in a playfully magisterial tone. “This person is accused of wilful disobedience both to his Colonel and to an old friend, who both desire and command his attendance at Maple Lodge, in the county of Norfolk, on or about the First of September next. See what you can do to bring him to reason.” “Perhaps it will be I who will bring you all to reason when you hear the powerful arguments I have to urge on my side. Ella shall judge,” said George. And he laughingly led Ella, who was as prim and solemn as ever, to a sofa, where he sat down beside her, and instantly resumed his gravity. “Of course you don’t want to come,” said Ella with disagreeable dryness, crossing her knees and clasping her hands round the uppermost in a masculine manner which constantly shocked her sisters’ sense of propriety, and recalled to Lady Millard’s mind her own ways in the old time before she crossed the Atlantic and became the dignified wife of an English baronet. “It isn’t that at all,” said George gravely; “I was married this morning.”