“I am not so sure,” I answered. “Barely a mile away there is a pretty piece of gorse land that appears to be no good to anyone. I daresay for a reasonable offer—” “I say, when will this show be ready?” interrupted Dick. “I propose beginning the alterations at once,” I explained. “By luck there happens to be a gamekeeper’s cottage vacant and within distance. The agent is going to get me the use of it for a year—a primitive little place, but charmingly situate on the edge of a wood. I shall furnish a couple of rooms; and for part of every week I shall make a point of being down there, superintending. I have always been considered good at superintending. My poor father used to say it was the only work I seemed to take an interest in. By being on the spot to hurry everybody on I hope to have the ‘show,’ as you term it, ready by the spring.” “I shall never marry,” said Robin. “Don’t be so easily discouraged,” advised Dick; “you are still young.” “I don’t ever want to get married,” continued Robin. “I should only quarrel with my husband, if I did. And Dick will never do anything—not with his head.” “Forgive me if I am dull,” I pleaded, “but what is the connection between this house, your quarrels with your husband if you ever get one, and Dick’s head?” By way of explanation, Robin sprang to the ground, and before he could stop her had flung her arms around Dick’s neck. “We can’t help it, Dick dear,” she told him. “Clever parents always have duffing children. But we’ll be of some use in the world after all, you and I.” The idea was that Dick, when he had finished failing in examinations, should go out to Canada and start a farm, taking Robin with him. They would breed cattle, and gallop over the prairies, and camp out in the primeval forest, and slide about on snow-shoes, and carry canoes on their backs, and shoot rapids, and stalk things—so far as I could gather, have a sort of everlasting Buffalo-Bill’s show all to themselves. How and when the farm work was to get itself done was not at all clear. The Little Mother and myself were to end our days with them. We were to sit about in the sun for a time, and then pass peacefully away. Robin shed a few tears at this point, but regained her spirits, thinking of Veronica, who was to be lured out on a visit and married to some true-hearted yeoman: which is not at present Veronica’s ambition. Veronica’s conviction is that she would look well in a coronet: her own idea is something in the ducal line. Robina talked for about ten minutes. By the time she had done she had persuaded Dick that life in the backwoods of Canada had been his dream from infancy. She is that sort of girl.