This speech so tickled Mollie that she went off into a burst of laughter, much to the terror of her mother, who stood up in trembling apprehension lest she should choke. “You made a joke, Emily,” he said, looking at his younger sister’s contortions. Emily was too impatient to speak to him further, and left the table. Soon the two men went back to the fallow to the turnips, and I walked along the path with the girls as they were going to school. “He irritates me in everything he does and says,” burst out Emily with much heat. “He’s a pig sometimes,” said I. “He is!” she insisted. “He irritates me past bearing, with his grand know-all way, and his heavy smartness—I can’t beat it. And the way mother humbles herself to him——!” “It makes you wild,” said I. “Wild!” she echoed, her voice vibrating with nervous passion. We walked on in silence, till she asked. “Have you brought me those verses of yours?” “No—I’m so sorry—I’ve forgotten them again. As a matter of fact, I’ve sent them away.” “But you promised me.” “You know what my promises are. I’m as irresponsible as a puff of wind.” She frowned with impatience and her disappointment was greater than necessary. When I left her at the corner of the lane I felt a sting of her deep reproach in my mind. I always felt the reproach when she had gone. I ran over the little bright brook that came from the weedy, bottom pond. The stepping-stones were white in the sun, and the water slid sleepily among them. One or two butterflies, indistinguishable against the blue sky, trifled from flower to flower and led me up the hill, across the field where the hot sunshine stood as in a bowl, and I was entering the caverns of the wood, where the oaks bowed over and saved us a grateful shade. Within, everything was so still and cool that my steps hung heavily along the path. The bracken held out arms to me, and the bosom of the wood was full of sweetness, but I journeyed on, spurred by the attacks of an army of flies which kept up a guerrilla warfare round my head till I had passed the black rhododendron bushes in the garden, where they left me, scenting no doubt Rebecca’s pots of vinegar and sugar. The low red house, with its roof discoloured and sunken, dozed in sunlight, and slept profoundly in the shade thrown by the massive maples encroaching from the wood. There was no one in the dining-room, but I could hear the whirr of a sewing-machine coming from the little study, a sound as of some great, vindictive insect buzzing about, now louder, now softer, now settling. Then came a jingling of four or five keys at the bottom of the keyboard of the drawing-room piano, continuing till the whole range had been covered in little leaps, as if some very fat frog had jumped from end to end.