Ariadne woke up with a plan, and after Simon had gone back to his friends at Henderland without proposing, and a hearty breakfast, we went out into the village and bought sixpenny-worth of beeswax, and pinched it into the shape of a skinny woman like Lady Scilly as near as we could. Then we laid it in a drawer on one of Ariadne's best silk ties, and we stuck a pin into it every day. I don't know if it did Lady Scilly any harm, but it did Ariadne a great deal of good. She looked down the columns of the _Morning Post_ every day to see if Lady Scilly was ill, or perhaps even dead? When we left Rattenraw she gave the waxen image to Christina, and asked her to be good enough to finish up the boxful of best short whites on it. Christina promised faithfully that she would, and said that we might rely on her, as she had a little private spite of her own to work off on that lady. I knew what it was, _i. e._ Lady Scilly's having tried to flirt with Peter, or at least Christina thinks that she did. Wives always think that only let them get into the same room with them, other women make a bee-line for their own particular dull husbands! Christina is nice, but she is just like another wife when it comes to preserving Peter. The Squire saw us off, with an enormous bouquet, that we put under the seat, having started, and forgot. So did Ariadne forget the Squire. One can only hope that after a decent interval he will marry Grace Paterson. She is a substantial farmer's daughter, in spite of her thinking she can write. But she can wring a fowl's neck, and make butter, two things that Ariadne never would be able to do, the one from disgust and the other from native incompetence and a hot hand. As regards the Squire's position, Grace is very nearly a lady, and he is very nearly not a gentleman, so it ought to turn out all right. CHAPTER XVIII Lady Scilly has had three nervous chills this autumn, and one motor spill and a half, so I think that the sixpence was well spent on beeswax. Christina in her letter to us said that she had stuck the figure so full of pins that it had fallen apart, whereupon she had consumed the bits before a slow fire, muttering incantations the while. I asked her what she did say, afterwards, and she said that "Devil! Devil! Devil!" repeated quite steadily till it melted, seemed all that was necessary, and that the simplest, strongest incantations were the best. Simon Hermyre comes here very often to call on Mother, whom he likes, if possible, better than Ariadne. He says that she is like Cigarette in a novel of Ouida's. I believe Cigarette was a Vivandière. I suppose it is Mother's neat figure makes him think of her as Cigarette. Simon adores Ouida, and Doré is his favourite artist. He has "that beautiful Pilate's wife's Dream" hung over his bed at home, he says. I always think it looks like a woman going down into her own coal-cellar and awfully afraid of beetles!