Lucy was so anxious about the Master that she went over to the lodge the next day directly after lunch. Cousin Mary was out; she had left him sitting in his chair taking his after-dinner nap as usual, and she had gone out. He woke up directly Lucy came in, and began to talk to her about her father and the old time. She was very glad that she had not brought Pamela in with her, or any of the Newnham girls, as she sometimes did. He would have told them that ridiculous story that was running in his mind, how his brother Dick had met her mother at a dancing-booth at the fair. He would have dwelt on all the homely details of their humble history. It would have been all over Newnham the next day that her father was a ploughman, and her mother kept a stall in the butter-market. Annabel Crewe, who had a fine taste for caricature, would have drawn delightful pictures of Lucy's progenitors--a lovely old man in a smock-frock with straw round his legs, and a milkmaid with her pail! She couldn't divert the Master's attention from this ridiculous topic. He had forgotten all about the things that had happened in later years, and had gone back in memory to the old familiar scenes and faces of his youth. His eyes were brighter to-day, and he was more restless than usual; he wanted to go out into the garden and sit in his accustomed seat on the lawn. It was such a perfect May day that no wonder he wanted to get out of that dark, gloomy old room, with the stuffy moreen curtains over the windows, and the faded carpets, and the worm-eaten, old-fashioned furniture, and the musty old books, into the sweet summer sunshine, where everything was fresh and new. There was nothing dark and gloomy and oppressive out there in that sweet leafy Fellows' garden. The lilacs were in their prime, pale puce and white and purple, every delightful indescribable hue, and the laburnum was dropping gold upon the grass. There was a cuckoo somewhere, calling, and the thrushes were singing, and the blackbird's note was still shrill and clear. It would soon be hoarse as a raven's, and the thrush would be silent, and the cuckoo would have altered his tune, and the lilac would have faded, and the gold of the gleaming, down-dropping laburnums would have turned to gray--and--and he might not be here to see it. If he wanted to enjoy the fleeting sunshine and the flying blossoms of the year, there was no time like the present. The Master didn't exactly put it in this way, but he was impatient to be out in the garden, in his old seat, and he wouldn't wait a minute longer for anybody. If Mary wasn't there he would go without her.