“A boy like you knows nothing about the matter,” the old lady answered, putting a stop to him decisively. Perhaps that was true enough; but it was also true that Val took a long walk to the linn next day, and sat down under the beeches, and mused for half an hour or so, without quite knowing what he was thinking about. How clearly he remembered those two expeditions, mingling them a little in his recollection, yet seeing each so distinctly! the small Violet in her blue cloak, sleeping on his shoulder (which thought made him colour slightly and laugh in the silence, such intimate companionship being strangely impossible to think of nowadays), and the elder Violet, still so sweet and young, younger than himself, though he was the very impersonation of Youth, repeating all the earlier experiences except that one. “By Jove, how jolly Mary is!” said Valentine to himself at the end of this reverie; and when he went home he devoted himself to Miss Percival, who was again at Rosscraig, as she always was when Lady Eskside was exposed to the strain and fatigue of company. “Do you remember our picnic at the linn last year?” he said, standing over Mary in a corner after dinner, to the great annoyance of an elderly admirer, who had meant to take this opportunity of making himself agreeable to a woman who seemed the very person to “make an excellent stepmother” to his seven children. Mary, who was conscious in some small degree of the worthy man’s meaning, was grateful to Val for once; and enjoyed, as the quietest of women do, the discomfiture of her would-be suitor. “Yes,” she said, smiling; “what of it, you unruly boy?” “I am not a proper subject for such epithets,” said Val. “I have attained my majority, and made a speech to the tenantry. I say, Mary, do you know, that’s a lovely spot, that linn. I was there to-day----” “Oh, you were there to-day?” “Yes, I was there. Is there anything wonderful in that?” said Val, not sure whether he ought not to take offence at the laughing tone, which seemed to imply something. “Tell Violet, when you see her, that it was uncommonly shabby of her not to come this year. We’d have gone again.” “There’s a virtue in three times, Val,” said Mary. “If you go again, it will be more than a joke; and I don’t think I’ll give your message to Vi.”