“Let us go and ask her,” said Mark; and led the way to the cool little parlour, where their mother was engaged in some parish writing for her brother, her writing-table so placed that she could look up from time to time at her husband’s portrait, which seemed to her, simple soul that she was! to look down on her with tender care and encouragement. Margaret never told her thoughts even to her daughter, but both Mark and Eva knew why their mother loved that place better than any other. Mark propounded Eva’s scheme, which met with no opposition from their mother, who was well content to know that they were happy and together. “Will you not take Elgitha?” she asked. “She loves to get a walk in the woods.” Eva would rather have had her brother all to herself, but a suggestion from her mother was law to her; so Mark ran up to the rectory to see if Elgitha might come with them, while Eveline put on her walking dress and prepared her basket, scissors, etc. Elgitha was now a big girl of thirteen. Small and delicate as she had been in her infancy, she was now developing a rather large frame, and was at that awkward age when a girl seems all angles, and does not know what to do with her hands and feet. Being an ugly likeness of her father, and in character more resembling the Echlins than the Manners, she in no way dimmed the lustre of Gilbert’s glory in her mother’s eyes, and was on all occasions extremely glad to escape to her aunt and cousins at the cottage. The idea of a walk in the woods with Mark and Eveline was enchanting, a delightful relief to the tedium of a _tête-à-tête_ drive with her mother in the phaeton, and Elgitha floundered into her walking gear with all possible speed. They met Eva at the garden gate, and, after she had put her cousin’s dress to rights with a few judicious touches, the three set off across the fields in the direction of Sunbridge. They crossed cornfields just ripening into yellow, spotted here and there with nodding poppies and blue cornflowers, and Elgitha sought counsel, as to the weather from the shepherd’s weather-glass, white or red, or, as to the time, from the seeding dandelion. The sun was high in the heavens, and blinding in his majesty, so that it was with a sense of exquisite relief that they gained the shelter of the woods, laden with full summer foliage, and whispering sweetly in the gentle wind. At Eva’s wish they sat down to rest under a lime just bursting into blossom. It was a day when to be alive was pleasure, and Mark lay on his back gazing up into the world of tender green, dreaming deliciously; but Elgitha had not reached the dreamy age, and, having sat for five minutes, pulling to pieces a bunch of poppies which she had gathered, and watching their tender leaves float in the wind, she suddenly started up at the sight of a horseman riding along the high road, where it skirted the wood some two hundred paces distant.