The dinner that evening at The Warren was a cheerful one; the humours of the day were described with biting satire by the gentle Lucy. She it was who had cruelly incited the stout vicar to elephantine gambols, to the intense disgust and annoyance of his angular wife. Who but Lucy could have caused the coldness between young farmer Wurzel and his affianced bride, Miss Grains, the brewer's daughter? Who but Lucy, as she sat on the shafts of the horse-roller, listening with apparently rapt attention to the lucubrations of young Wurzel on the subject of shorthorns. Perhaps the clasped hands and the ecstatic look were hardly necessary, for even so interesting a subject as stockbreeding. But Lucy had noted, out of the corner of her watchful eye, the arrival of Miss Grains, indignant and perspiring. "You'll excuse him, Miss Warrender, it's more thoughtlessness than want of manners; but he oughtn't to be taking up your time like this," cried the brewer's daughter, as she bore off her reluctant prize. To this day nothing will ever persuade the buxom mother of farmer Wurzel's fine young family that her William was not actually audacious enough to propose to Miss Lucy Warrender, and that his attentions were favourably received. So often has poor William Wurzel been twitted on this matter that he has come to look upon himself as a very Lothario, rescued at the right moment. In the drawing-room things went on much as they always do in country drawing-rooms in the hot weather. The girls sang; Miss Hood, their chaperon, played the inevitable Chopin; but (as, unlike zoophites, chaperons cannot be cut in two pieces, and yet live) Miss Hood felt it her duty to leave Lucy, and to follow into the verandah Haggard and his _fiancée_. Perhaps, after all, this may have been rather a relief to the lovers, for they had had a long innings that day, no one having presumed to disturb the numerous _têtes-à-tête_ of the engaged couple.