“Ah, things won’t go wrong.” Uncle Tim smiled confidently. “Young Mark’s a good fellow. He’ll make Katherine happy all right. But she’ll have to change, and changing hurts. She’s been asleep like the others.... Oh, yes! she has! There’s no one loves her better than I, but she’s had, in the past, as much imagination as that trowel there. Perhaps now Philip will give her some. She’ll lose him if she doesn’t wake up. He’s restive now under the heavy hands of my dear relations—He’ll be gone one fine morning if they don’t take care. Katie must look out....” He waved his trowel in the direction of the garden. “All this is like a narcotic. It’s so safe and easy and ordered. Philip knows he oughtn’t to be comfortable here. Katie, Millie and Henry are beginning to know it. Even Harriet, Aggie, Betty, George will get a tiny glimmering of it one day. But they’re too old to change. That’s their tragedy. All the same, you see, before this time next year George will be proposing to take Harriet for a trip abroad—Italy probably—a thing he’s never done since the day of his marriage.” And at that very moment George entered, very smart and big and red, with yellow gloves and a flower in his button-hole. “What’s that?” he cried, with his usual roar of laughter. “Who says I’ll do what?” “Take Harriet abroad before this time next year,” said Tim. “I?... Not much!... We know better than that. England’s good enough for us. There isn’t a spot in the world to touch this place in the summer—so why should we stir? You’ll be saying we ought to go to Russia next, ... smoking your beastly pipe in here too. Why don’t you dress decently and go to church?” A Church Invasion followed. The Invasion rustled and listened to the bell that called across the garden. ‘Com-ing?... Com-ing?... Com-ing?’... Then ‘Come! Come! Come!’ and said: “Where’s Katie?... It isn’t Litany to-day, so there’ll be time before lunch. Where’s Henry?... We’d better start, the bell’s stopping. Just hold my prayer-book a minute, Millie dear, whilst I do this....” Finally the Invasion called: “Katie! Katie! Katherine!... We’re going!” and a voice, very far away answered: “Yes.... I’ll catch you up! Go on!” The Invasion left, followed by Uncle Tim, smiling to himself, the trowel in his hand. The house was very still then, relapsing with a little sigh of content into its Sunday quiet: a bird was chattering gently to itself in the wet garden. Katherine hurried into the drawing-room, her cheeks flushed, buttoning her gloves, her prayer-book under her arm. Her black dress, a little open at the front, had a stiff black lace collar at the back, Elizabethan fashion; now, for the first time in her life, she was wearing something that she had herself thought about and planned. It was for Philip....