neighborhood twenty years ago. Their four long gardens in a row must
be a bower of greenery in summer, and it was sad to think that the flats
opposite were no doubt due to the death of someone who had owned a
similar house and garden.

Michael remembered the balcony in front with steps on either side.
Underneath this he now saw that there was another entrance, evidently to
the kitchen. Two fairly large trees were planted in the grass that ran
up to the house on either side of the balcony.

"Those are my mulberries," said Mrs. Gainsborough. "This is called
Mulberry Cottage. I've been meaning to have the name painted on the
outside door for nearly forty years, but I always forget. There's a
character to give myself. Ah, dear me! The Captain loved his mulberries.
But you ought to see this in the springtime. Well, my flowers are really
remarkable. But there, it's not to be wondered at. M' father was a
nursery gardener."

She looked round at Michael and winked broadly. He could not think why.
Possibly it was a comic association in her mind with the behavior of the
Captain in carrying her off from such a home.

"The Duke of Fulham to see you, girls," she wheezed at the door of the
sitting-room, and, giving Michael a push, retreated with volleys of
bronchial laughter. The girls were sitting in front of the fire. Lily
was pretending to trim a hat: Sylvia was reading, but she flung her book
down as Michael entered. He had the curiosity to look at the title, and
found it was the Contes Drolatiques of Balzac. An unusual girl, he
thought: but his eyes were all for Lily, and because he could not kiss
her, he felt shy and stupid. However, the shoes, which he now restored,
supplied an immediate topic, and he was soon perfectly at ease again.
Presently the girls left him to get ready to go out, and he sat thinking
of Lily, while the canary chirped in the brass cage. The silence here
was very like the country. London was a thousand miles away, and he
could hear Lily and Sylvia moving about overhead. Less and less did he
think there could be anything wrong with Mulberry Cottage. Yet the
apparent security was going to make it rather difficult to take Lily
away. Certainly he could ask her to marry him at once; but she might not
want to marry him at once. The discovery of her in this pleasant house
with a jolly friend was spoiling the grand swoop of rescue which he had
planned. She would not presumably be escaping from a situation she
a