The girls were seated on tufts of hay, with the men leaning in attendance on them, and the manservant waiting on all. George was placed between Lettie and Hilda. The former handed him his little egg-shell of tea, which, as he was not very thirsty, he put down on the ground beside him. Then she passed him the bread and butter, cut for five-o’clock tea, and fruits, grapes and peaches, and strawberries, in a beautifully carved oak tray. She watched for a moment his thick, half-washed fingers fumbling over the fruits, then she turned her head away. All the gay teatime, when the talk bubbled and frothed over all the cups, she avoided him with her eyes. Yet again and again, as someone said: “I’m sorry, Mr. Saxton—will you have some cake?”—or “See, Mr. Saxton—try this peach, I’m sure it will be mellow right to the stone,”—speaking very naturally, but making the distinction between him and the other men by their indulgence towards him, Lettie was forced to glance at him as he sat eating, answering in monosyllables, laughing with constraint and awkwardness, and her irritation flickered between her brows. Although she kept up the gay frivolity of the conversation, still the discord was felt by everybody, and we did not linger as we should have done over the cups. “George,” they said afterwards, “was a wet blanket on the party.” Lettie was intensely annoyed with him. His presence was unbearable to her. She wished him a thousand miles away. He sat listening to Cresswell’s whimsical affectation of vulgarity which flickered with fantasy, and he laughed in a strained fashion. He was the first to rise, saying he must get the cows up for milking. “Oh, let us go—let us go. May we come and see the cows milked?” said Hilda, her delicate, exquisite features flushing, for she was very shy. “No,” drawled Freddy, “the stink o’ live beef ain’t salubrious. You be warned, and stop here.” “I never could bear cows, except those lovely little highland cattle, all woolly, in pictures,” said Louie Denys, smiling archly, with a little irony. “No,” laughed Agnes D’Arcy, “they—they’re smelly,”—and she pursed up her mouth, and ended in a little trill of deprecatory laughter, as she often did. Hilda looked from one to the other, blushing. “Come, Lettie,” said Leslie good-naturedly, “I know you have a farmyard fondness—come on,” and they followed George down. As they passed along the pond bank a swan and her tawny, fluffy brood sailed with them the length of the water, “tipping on their little toes, the darlings—pitter-patter through the water, tiny little things,” as Marie said. We heard George below calling “Bully—Bully—Bully—Bully!”—and then, a moment or two after, in the bottom garden: “Come out, you little fool—are you coming out of it?” in manifestly angry tones. “Has it run away?” laughed Hilda, delighted and we hastened out of the lower garden to see.