Jock looked up on being addressed. Though he was many fathoms deep below the surface, he always heard when he was spoken to, and often when he was not spoken to. He was lying across the arm of one seat, with his book lying on the cushions of another, in a dark blue valley below him. He gave a sidelong look of disdain to his questioner. “Do you count your pages?” said Jock, with contemptuous satire. “I can tell by what the reading is.” “Hush, Jock! I was not reading at all,” Lucy said, “but thinking.” “And what might the thinking be? regretting town, or welcoming the country? We’ll give her, Jock, two pennies for her thoughts.” “You know,” said Lucy, “it is not either town or country I was thinking of. I was thinking of Lady Randolph’s, and all that was new to me there; and of some things I have had to do, and how I have lived so different from everything before, and now coming back--home. It always was home, I can’t call it anything else; but it will be different again. There is no more papa. That does not make me unhappy,” said Lucy, the tears coming into her eyes, “for it was what he always trained me to expect; but it will be dreary to go into the house and to find that he is not there, sitting by the fire--with the will.” “The will?” Sir Thomas had no fear to be thought inquisitive, his face was full of kindly interest and sympathy. “Did I never tell you? that was all his thought. It was his amusement, as long--well, as long as Jock could remember. Don’t you recollect, Jock, how he would sit and write a little bit, and rub his hands, and read it to me when I came in? That is how I know so well all he wished me to do. He would put down his newspaper when something occurred to him, and write it down. It pleased him more than anything. Don’t you think it is a great pleasure, when any one is gone, to know exactly what they wished you to do?” “It is a great bondage sometimes,” Sir Thomas said. “I don’t think I shall feel it a bondage. But somehow going back is almost stranger than going away. The rooms at the Terrace will look small; and it will not be prettily furnished; and I shall not have Lady Randolph to talk to, nor the carriage, nor the visitors--” “These things are easily got, even the visitors. As for Lady Randolph, perhaps you can put up with me instead. I am very fond of being talked to, and you know she recommended me as her substitute.” “That is very true,” said Lucy, with her usual calm; “but then you are going to Scotland to shoot. You are only here on your way.” “There is no saying, if you consult me a great deal, and give me a great many interesting subjects to think about how long I may linger on my way.” “Oh, as for that!” said Lucy, “there is one thing--very interesting; but then I am not sure if I should tell it to any one, though it would be a great, a very great comfort. I tried to tell Lady Randolph once, and ask her--and I have wanted so much to tell you--to ask you--”