I felt a distinct wave of irritation against Annabel. I was fully aware that I was twenty-four years older than the twins, but I saw no necessity for rubbing it in like this, and, after all, I was five years younger than Annabel. After a little desultory conversation, my sister asked the young people to walk round the garden, before tea; so we started on one of those horticultural pilgrimages which are an absolute necessity to the moral welfare of all garden-lovers. Frank, having shared in the forget-me-not tribulation, was a partaker in Annabel's joy at the sky-blue blush now spreading over the bed; and Fay asked all the right questions and said all the right things. She even went so far as to wonder whether Queen Elizabeth ever sat under the mulberry tree, thereby giving Annabel her always-longed-for opportunity of explaining that mulberry trees were unknown in England until the reign of James the First. Frank pulled up in ecstasy opposite a flame-coloured azalea that was just bursting into bloom. "Isn't it simply ripping?" he exclaimed. "It's for all the world like a coloured picture of the Burning Bush in a Sunday book!" "It reminds one of Mrs. Browning's 'common bush afire with God,'" added his sister. "The flame-coloured azaleas are not as common as the pink-and-white ones," explained Annabel the Literal. "And I am sorry to see that this particular plant is becoming overshadowed by an elder-tree," she added, fiercely breaking off an overhanging branch of the offending elder with her own hands. "Poor little azalea!" exclaimed Fay; "I pity it. It is so crushing to be overshadowed by one's elders. We have all been through it, and so we know exactly how it feels." Annabel apparently did not hear the joke, and she most certainly did not see it. "I must speak to Cutler about the elder-trees," she went on, "and tell him to cut them down more. To my mind he is letting them have their own way far too much." "It's an awful mistake to let one's elders have too much of their own way," said Frank. "Let us be careful that we don't do it, Fay." Annabel heard that time. "You are confusing two words, Frank," she kindly explained. "I was referring to elder-trees. There are two kinds of elders: the people who are older than ourselves, and the elders that grow in the garden." "And the elders that grew in Susanna's garden," added the irrepressible Frank, "that's a third kind." I smothered a laugh, and Annabel looked shocked: Fay's laugh showed no signs of any smothering. "I do not approve of young people reading the Apocrypha," my sister said rather stiffly: "it is not suitable for them." "But it's in the Bible in a sort of way," pleaded Fay, "we were allowed to read it at Miss Wylies'." "Not exactly the Bible; I could not call it the Bible." Annabel was relentless. Fay nodded airily. "I know what you mean: sort of, but not quite. Rather like an Irish peer: no seat in the Lords, but a peer for all practical purposes."