not
Rosalind. If I had my way, I should give some pretty trifle to
Rosalind, who will be overdone with presents, and spend all we can spare
on something really handsome for Esther," said his wife gently; and
Peggy cried, "Hear! Hear!" and banged such uproarious applause with her
heels that the colonel felt himself hopelessly out-voted.

"If you had your way, indeed!" he grumbled, pushing his chair back from
the table and preparing to leave the room. "When do you _not_ get your
way, I'd like to know? It's a case of serving two masters with a
vengeance, when a man has a wife and a grown-up daughter! Settle it to
please yourselves, and don't take any notice of me. I'm going out
shooting, and won't be home until tea-time, so you will have plenty of
time to talk it over in peace and quietness!"

Peggy ran after him with a little skip, slipped her hand through his
arm, and rubbed her face coaxingly against the shoulder of his rough
tweed suit.

"He is just a down-trodden old dear, isn't he? So mild and obedient--a
perfectly nonentity in his own house! No one trembles before him! He
never lays down the law as if he were the Tsar of All the Russias, or
twenty German Emperors rolled into one! Now does that really mean that
you are to be out for lunch? I'm housekeeper, you know, and it makes a
difference to my arrangement. You won't say you are going to be out,
then appear suddenly at the last moment?"

"Not I! I shall be miles away, and cannot spare the time to come so
far; but for that matter I cannot see why it should make any difference.
One person more or less can be of no importance."

"He is though, very much indeed, when it happens to be the head of the
family!" remarked Peggy sagely to her mother when they were left alone,
"because I don't mind confessing to you, dear, that, owing to the
agitation consequent on my interview with the fair Rosalind, I entirely
omitted to post my order for the butcher! If father had been at home, I
should have been compelled to drive over in the heat and dust; but as it
is, I can send a card by the early post, and the things will be here for
dinner. You don't object, I know, for you have a mind above trifles,
and I can provide quite a nice little meal for two."

"Oh, I don't mind for myself, but do be careful to send your orders
regularly, darling!" pleaded her mother earnestly. "We are so entirely
in the country that a day might come when you were not able to get
su