"Oh, I do just _despise_ your waist!" she said to Ariadne; "I've been looking at it all the way we've come." Christina absently took hold of her whip and then rattled it back in its socket. She then scolded Jane till I should have thought any ordinary child couldn't have gone on sitting up, but this one did, never saying a word, but pursed her mouth in till there was hardly a line to be seen. Then Christina began to tell us how dull she had found it living in the country, and how difficult to get acclimatized at first. "But in the end, the country rubs off on one," she sighed, "and a good thing too. Oh, the mistakes I made at first! You know that Peter and I have both been staying with the dear Bishop of Guyzance." "Oh, Christina, you _have_ changed!" said I. "I know, dear, three services on Sunday and a shilling for the offertory. So different from Newton Hall and Farm Street. As I was saying, I came back from Lale Castle the day before yesterday, post haste, to hatch some chickens----" "I thought a hen did that?" ventured Ariadne. "Right you are! I pretended to Peter that it was an insane desire to kiss the baby, but I was an hour in the house before I even thought of the child. The hen was due to hatch fifteen. I interviewed her every hour, much to her disgust. At last, crack!--one came out----" "You mean chipped the shell," said Ariadne primly. "Right again! I put it in a basket by the kitchen fire, the servants shunted it for dinner, it got cold, it died in the night. Yesterday five more happened, I popped them in the mild oven for a minute, just then some one pinched my baby--he screamed, and went on screaming like an electric-bell gone wrong. I had to go and look after him--cook made a blazing fire, do you see?--I have only saved five out of that brood." "How very funny!" said Ariadne, who wasn't a bit amused. I was. Christina told us of a little hen Peter had before, who had been used to be set to ducks, and who had learned to march them all down to the nearest pond. The first lot of chickens had been driven to a watery and unfamiliar death. "Would you like to go and be photographed to-morrow?" she asked Ariadne, and Ariadne was on the _qui vive_ at once. "They all think one an unnatural parent here, if one doesn't take one's brood to be perpetuated at Oldfort every year. But the trains there are so awkward for us. I am fighting the railway authorities tooth and nail, trying to persuade them to put on a slip carriage. They do it for Keiller and his marmalade, so why not for me? Say! I am on the pony's neck! I am going to put the seat back, take the reins a minute!" Ariadne didn't of course like her giving them to me, but everybody always sees at once that I am the practical one. When the seat was arranged she went bubbling on.