"If it's true--" Ishmael paused for sheer rage, then went on: "I'll tackle John-Willy, and if it's true he can go. But of course it's Archelaus really, just because he knows how I feel about it. It isn't even as though it were the season for it, if you can talk of a season for such a thing, but no one can be very hard up for food as late as this. Oh, if I can't be free of him even now he's working at Botallack--" "I had such a quarrel with Mamma about that this morning," struck in Vassie, who disliked the conversation and thought she had been out of it long enough. "She was boasting at breakfast--after you'd gone out, Ishmael--that Archelaus was a captain now, and I laughed, and said it was more than he'd ever been in the army, but that of course a mine captain wasn't a real one ... and she was furious. She said it was quite real enough for her and Archelaus anyway, though perhaps not for the likes of me. I met Archelaus at the mill the other day when I was over seeing Phoebe, and he certainly did seem smart, ever so different from when he came back. You wouldn't have known him." She ended on her high laugh and rolled over a little woolly puppy that lay in her lap, burying her long fingers in its coat. She was perched upon a grassy slope like some vast moth that had alighted there, her pale skirts spread, a white cashmere shawl swathed about her shoulders, her golden head tipped back on her full throat. Over her, like a swaying flower, a tiny parasol reared on a long tasselled stalk, held in Killigrew's hand as he lounged beside her. He let his eyes run over her now, tipping the parasol to one side so that at his pleasure the late sunlight should touch her hair and her still flawless skin. She knew she could stand the test, and stayed a moment before motioning him to tip the parasol back again. "It seems to me Archelaus is going a lot to the mill," observed Killigrew idly, and more for the purpose of saying something than because he really thought so. "I ran into him there the other day when I was doing my sketch of it." A short hush, pregnant with thought, followed on his words. To Boase and Vassie--those two so different beings--came the swift reflection "That would not be at all a bad thing. It would remove a danger." Killigrew was interested, as an onlooker, in the idea of the alliance his own words had suggested. Ishmael felt an irrational little pang. Phoebe's smiles, her little friendliness, had always belonged to him--Archelaus would crush them as big fingers rub the powder off a butterfly's wings.... If he and Archelaus had been more truly brothers it would have been a very nice arrangement ... little Phoebe would make a sweeter sister in some ways than the imperious Vassie.... "This puppy is for Phoebe," cried Vassie, breaking into a hurried speech; "it's been promised her a long time. She's so fond of pets."