"Now you know," she said archly, "why I did not wish to remove Dulcie to a great distance at this critical moment in her young life. I hear from Miss Jones, who writes daily, that there are shrimping expeditions and picnics with the children, strolls by moonlight without them." Reader, I did not oblige that serpent to disgorge the fact that moonlight strolls are not taken by two women and one man. I knew as well as possible that Miss Jones had received a hint to give these two young men every opportunity. I thanked Providence that I had not got into that _galère_. I had been saved by the fixed principle of a life time to avoid action of any kind. I had hardly begun to enjoy the month of solitude when it was over, and Gertrude and Jimmy returned from Harrogate, he very limp and depressed, as always after his cure, and sure that it had done him more harm than good. The two girls came back from the Solent looking the picture of health; even Joan was almost pretty, beaming under her tan. Dulcibella, who did not tan, was ravishing. The children were a rich brown pink apparently all over, and the ancient Miss Jones was a jet-beaded mass of bridling gratitude and self-importance. Then, of course, the storm burst. You and I, reader, know exactly what had happened. Dulcie had got engaged to Mr. Vavasour, and Joan to Mr. Wilson. Dulcie came skimming down in the dusk the first evening to announce the event to me, her soft cheek pressed to mine. She said she wanted me to be the first to know. _And Gertrude had said I could do nothing for her!_ She told me that at that very moment the blissful Joan was announcing her own betrothal to her parents. Next morning Jimmy came down to see me. He generally gravitated to me if anything went wrong. "We are in a hat up at the house," he said. "Joan has actually engaged herself to that oaf, Wilson. Infernal cheek on his part, I call it." "You have had him hanging about for months," I said, "I expect he and Joan thought you approved." "They did. They do. But that doesn't make it any better. Of course I said I would not allow it, and Joan was amazed and cried all night, and Gertrude is in a state of such nervous tension you can't go near her, and poor old Jones, who came back preening herself, is bathed in tears--and Gertrude says I have got to speak to Wilson at once. She always says things have got to be done at once." He groaned, and sat down heavily on my low wall, crushing a branch of verbena.