‘Jack,’ said Elly, in that mature and elder-sisterly way with which she had always taken the charge of him; ‘if you can’t bear to leave me and go away, and yet can’t bear to keep me and bring me to poverty, what is to be done? You will have to bear either one or the other, so far as I can see.’ It was not perhaps the right moment to laugh: but it is difficult to regulate that sense of the ridiculous, which is one comfort in all our troubles. Something in the sight of John’s solemn face, so troubled and serious in the clutch of this dilemma, overcame Elly in her nervous excitement and she burst into a wild peal of laughter--which rang over all the damp, sweet wilderness that had become the Garden of Eden of this primitive natural pair. By-and-by, they gathered up the basket and the books, and took the tea and sugar to Betty Mirfield, who had been grumbling that Miss Elly was so late, and did not hesitate to tell her so. And then they went back again, lingering across the common, winding their devious way among the great furze-bushes which caught at them as they passed with prickles that left marks of dew and a breath of honey; and so very slowly walked back again to Edgeley, the rectory and the world, from which heaven knows they had gone far enough afield. They had of course a thousand things to say, a thousand, and a thousand more; and lost themselves in that fairyland which by times is near to all of us at every age, but nearest of all at the age of Elly and John. But when no further delay was possible, the sun sinking in the skies, signs of home-going and evening rest penetrating even to their charmed senses, they reached at last the edge of the common, and saw before them the everyday existence which they had forgotten, they both awoke from their dream, and standing still for one awful moment looked each other in the face. Oh, it was all easy enough between themselves, delightfully easy, needing no troublous explanations, the very course of nature. But beyond that enchanted common, and the gorse bushes with their prickles! They stood and faltered, and Elly, who had been the bravest, felt now for the first time her heart sink to her shoes. John’s face set into that sternness which belongs to a forlorn hope. He caught Elly’s hand and drew it through his arm. ‘We must be honest, whatever else,’ he said. ‘Come and let us have it out at once.’ ‘Oh, Jack!’ cried the other culprit. They were no longer the enchanted prince and princess. Aunt Mary’s face, severe as fate already, shone terrible upon them from the window, and there was no escape. CHAPTER XV. A FAMILY CONCLAVE.