As for Lucy herself, she was so anxious to be civil to everybody, and so unaccustomed to the conflict that had thus suddenly sprung up around her, that she could not tell what to do. She looked round wistfully toward Sir Tom, who, for his part, stood quite outside the immediate circle round her, smiling to himself with that quick perception of the “fun” of the situation, which was, Lucy thought with vexation, the chief thing he thought of. She felt wounded that he should laugh at her; but then he was always laughing. Little Jock, on the other side, was a spectator too; but a scene has a very different aspect according as you look upon it from above or from below. Jock was low down among the feet of all these people. Mrs. Rushton nearly brushed him away with her ample gown; Ray all but knocked him down as he came forward sheepishly to shake hands with Lucy. There was something savage in the energy with which little Jock clutched at his sister’s dress. “I say, can’t they let us alone? I want to get home-- I want to get home,” cried the little fellow. Nobody took the slightest notice of little Jock. Sir Tom, in the distance, laughed more and more in his mustache, but ruefully. He came forward at last and lifted Jock out from among the other people’s legs. “Come and stand here with me, old fellow; you and I are left out in the cold,” said Sir Tom. The tall man and the tiny boy stood out of the crowd and watched while Lucy was hustled into the fly, Sir Tom laughing, Jock alarmed and gloomy. “She’s going away without _me_,” Jock said with a _naïf_ consternation. Sir Thomas laughed. “Your day and mine is over, old man,” he said.