re was a grape jelly; Sir Peter was helped twice to
this.

"Do you make it yourself?" he asked Mrs. Farquharson.

"Whoever else?" she answered.

"But you should taste her marmalade at breakfast!" exclaimed John.

"I like a good marmalade; we have the 'Dundee'; which is yours?" asked
Sir Peter. He fell into their informal ways so easily.

"We make our own," said Mrs. Farquharson proudly.

"Upon my word," said Sir Peter, as he stirred his coffee with a tiny
spoon, and accepted a match for his cigar--"upon my word, I haven't
eaten such a dinner in years. So--er--companionable--you know."

At eleven, when they went with him to the door, Mrs. Farquharson met
them in the hall.

"Good-night, Farquharson," said Sir Peter.

"Good-night, sir," said Mrs. Farquharson, and handed him a parcel.
"Would you please to slip these glasses into your greatcoat pocket: two
of the jelly, and two of the marmalade. Here are the recipes, written on
this paper; Genevieve has copied them out very plain and large. That
Mrs. Burbage can read them--with her spectacles."

XII

Two happy, eventful years passed.

One evening, as they sat in the long library, John happened to mention
Rosemary Sussex,--and the old parsonage, where his boyhood had been
spent, untenanted now--in disrepair. Sir Peter asked a casual question
or two. For the rest of the evening he schemed in silence.

Shortly thereafter his mysterious absences began. He required an earlier
breakfast on certain days; and John and Phyllis sometimes dined alone.

The new parsonage at Rosemary is nearer the church than the old,--but
the old parsonage has more land, and its garden slopes gently downward
to the little river, slipping murmurously away to the sea.

So long as Sir Peter tried to keep part of his plan a secret from the
vestry, he had one failure after another for his pains. Time after time
he returned on the early evening train to London, growling into his
white mustache. They would not say no, and they did not say yes; he made
no progress. But when he pledged a discreet vestryman to confidence, and
told him he sought to buy the old parsonage for the son of its former
occupant, the Reverend Hugh Landless, and for his wife, the ways were
smoothed at once. A morning came, at last, when he could tell them he
had a surprise in store for them, and could place the title-deed in
Phyllis's hands.

"It is my belated wedding-gift," said Sir Peter.

Phyllis will never