“Is that all you have to say?” “I don’t know what more I can say. It will be awfully lonely in the winter-time, and when it’s raining; but perhaps you will only come here in the summer, and have another place for the dark days.” “The dark days,” he repeated with a little trouble. “You don’t know much about it, I’m afraid,” he added with an attempt to be jocular; “the fine folk go to London in the summer, and spend what you call the dark days in the country. That’s the right thing to do.” “But it’s awfully foolish,” said Marion with a very serious face. Archie did not say anything in articulate words, but he made a sort of murmur of assent. “Now if it was me,” said the girl, “I would live here in the summer and take one of the new houses, the new big houses out by the Park, or on the Kelvin Road; they’re grand big houses, bigger than this, just like palaces, to spend the winter in; and where we could go to all the grand parties, and be near the football ground--where there was aye something going on. There will be very little going on here.” “Unless there might, maybe be a curling pond,” suggested Archie, but very dubiously, and with a sigh. Rowland was struck with a certain reasonableness in this suggestion, which chilled his enthusiasm a little in spite of himself. “Come and have some luncheon,” he said, “and afterwards we can talk of that.” Lunch was set out for them in a small room, one of the many which had bewildered Marion. There was already a tribe of servants in possession, and the small, well-ordered table and silent servants overawed the young people once more. The new butler had the air of a minister (he had, indeed, though Marion did not understand these fine distinctions, the airs of a Dean at the least), and it was all that the girl could do not to call him sir. She accepted what he handed to her meekly with a reverential submission to his better knowledge. As for Archie, he had committed himself, but fortunately not so as to be comprehended by any one but his sister, by offering the gentleman in black a chair. “Well,” said their father again, “so you think Rosmore will be dull, and there will be nothing going on?” “That was my opinion,” said Marion firmly. Archie was not to be reckoned upon in company as a steady backer up, and she thought it wisest not to give him the opportunity of betraying her. “The rooms are very pretty, and there’s a beautiful view; but you cannot be always looking at the view. And it’s very rainy down here. It rains mostly every day. And then there are so many trees. In the winter-time it will be terrible dark, and not a shop on this side, or a place to go to.” “You will have to lay in all your stores, my dear, before the winter comes.” “No, not that,” said Marion; “but the shops are always a diversion; it is not for buying things. And there will be no parties to go to.” “Have you many parties,” said Rowland with a laugh, “where you are?”