"He thoroughly understands all kinds of gardening," returned Lydia. "There are few auctions in Fayre, so between times he would be gardening, and I should do the housework. It would be a lucky arrangement for your cousin and--and us." And immovable Lydia faltered over the latter touching pronoun. "And what would become of us without you, Lydia?" asked Rob. "Have you thought of us?" "My mother would come to do for you," said Lydia, "and she knows how to do everything better than I do." "Is she--younger than you, Lyddie?" asked Rob. Lydia gave Rob one of the glances by which she frequently reproved frivolity. "A mother is never younger than her child," she said sternly. "But my mother is livelier than I am, and she is only middle-aged--forty-three." "How can your mother be only forty-three?" cried Rob involuntarily. "I am twenty-four, and she was nineteen years old when I was born," said Lydia. "It seems to me I smell that cake." "So do I," said Rob, taking it out of the oven. "Well, we'll see about your mother, and all the rest of the plan when the time comes. Cousin Charlotte has not even begun to build. I must hurry off, or I shall not be ready when the guests come." Rob ran out of the room, Lydia's voice pursuing her into the hall. "If she knows she can get Mr. Dennis and me she may hasten; her Annie that she had has gone away, and she would likely build quicker if she knew there was some one she could count on." Lydia called after her, and Rob burst in upon Wythie at her toilette in their bedroom with the surprising news of the past hour. "Oh, dear," sighed Wythie while she laughed at Rob's account of Lydia's announcement, "how can Cousin Peace want to leave us and how can we let her go? Yet, of course, it is natural that she should cling to that spot where she was born and has always lived, and natural to want her own home. But that dear lean-to domestic chapel will be a sore loss to us! It seems to me that this has been a winter of uneventful events that count for a great deal." "I suppose that is partly because we are at that age when everything seems significant," said Rob with great astuteness. "It will make a lot of difference to me just now if I can't get ready in time to be down at the station when the train arrives." And she frantically tried to find the button which was, naturally, on the other side of the band of the skirt, which she had put on wrong side out. "'Or madly squeeze a right-hand foot into a left-hand shoe,'" quoted Wythie mildly as she went to rescue Rob from her plight. "There is time, Robin, if you only wouldn't try to take it all at once." "Robins are always flustering birds," said Rob emerging, flushed, but grateful, from the skirt which Oswyth had righted. "But you know it would be hard not to be on hand to witness the arrival of the first instalments."