"--and we shall talk about all those things you always say 'Hush' when I come in--sha'n't we, Causton?" "Prrridd-ee!" taunted the French child: and B. Major spoke. "But I say, Causton, when do you take your vac.--June or September?" "And where shall you go?" somebody else demanded. "I'm going to Ireland--father's taken a house," cried a third. "Nobody cares where you're going! Causton, will you come home with us?" "No; come to Ireland with us!" "Well, can I come home with you? I loved that man who brought you here!" (Burnett Minor was the young woman who had loved Chaff.) "It wasn't Lord Moone, was it?" Macfarlane asked. "Or was it your father?" "Your cocoa, Causton," said B. Major. Louie had never been so run after before. She curled up among the slippered feet at the foot of the bed (there were four girls stretched upon it), and alternately stroked the hair and tweaked the ears of Burnett Minor, who had defeated Pigou in the scramble to put her head into Louie's lap. "I _can_ have the pitch next to yours, can't I?" the child demanded, her eyes turned up and her face (to Louie) upside down. "There, you see, Pig, she says I can--so voo juste pouvez sechey-up, là." This sleeping out was a summer custom at Chesson's. It began with the warm weather, sometimes in June, sometimes in July. On account of the morning and evening carrying of bedding and mattresses, the "pitches" nearest the house were deemed the most desirable, and weeks ahead there was bickering about the "bagging" of them. They bickered now, and then turned to the vacations again. Louie listened, saying little. For her, vacations in this sense hardly existed. Vacations lose their value when you study as slackly as Louie did. It might be amusing to go home with one or other of the girls for a week or two, but on the other hand she hardly thought she would. These were the things she was both "in at" and "out of." B. Major was talking about them now. Soon she would be taking her presentation lessons; she was coming out; she had an unofficial admirer; yes, Louie saw quite plainly what B. Major's future would be. What was her own going to be? She had not the least idea.... No, she did not really want a vacation. More or fewer, there would be girls at Chesson's throughout the summer. Chesson's still amused her; she could leave once for all when it ceased to amuse her. She was learning nothing. She neither wished to start a lavender farm, as Elwell, the daughter of Sir James Elwell of the Treasury, did, nor to grow peaches, as did Macfarlane, nor to add to her pocket-money by selling pot-pourri at extravagant prices to her friends, which was Burnett Major's idea--until she should marry. She could hardly sell pot-pourri to her prize-fighting father. She might (she smiled) sell him hops--she seemed to remember that beer was made of hops.... And she certainly did not intend to mug at theory for the sake of a medal, as Earle was doing at this very moment....