hank you, Dr. Clinton,"
replied Joan. "Perhaps you would like to hear us a few dates, so that
our afternoon walk may not pass entirely unimproved."

"You had much better look at Joan's tongue," said Nancy. "Starling said
last night that her stomach was a little out of order, and we rebuked
her for her vulgarity."

"You are a record pair, you two," said Walter, looking at them with
unwilling admiration. "I don't believe any of us led that poor old woman
the dance that you do. Do you want some jumbles, twankies?"

"Ra-_ther_," said the twins with one voice, and they turned into the
village shop.

The tea-table was spread on the lawn, and the Squire came out of the
window of the library as Walter reached the garden. "Well, my boy," he
said, "so you're going to settle down at Melbury Park, are you? That's a
nice sort of thing to spring on us; but good luck to you! You can always
come down here when you want a holiday."

CHAPTER VIII

BY THE LAKE

Whitsuntide that year fell early in June, and the weather was glorious.
Cicely awoke on Friday morning with a sense of happiness. She slept with
her blinds up, and both her windows were wide open. She could see from
her pillow a great red mass of peonies backed by dark shrubs across the
lawn, and in another part of the garden laburnums and lilacs and
flowering thorns, and all variations of young green from trees and grass
under a sky of light blue. Thrushes and blackbirds were piping sweetly.
She loved these fresh mornings of early summer, and had often wakened to
them with that slight palpitation of happiness.

But, when she was fully awake, it had generally happened that the
pleasure had rather faded, at any rate of late years, since she had
grown up. In her childhood it had been enough to have the long summer
day in front of her, especially in holiday time, when there would be no
irksome schoolroom restraint, nothing but the pleasures and adventures
of the open air. But lately she had needed more, and more, at Kencote,
had seldom been forthcoming. Moreover she had hardly known what the
"more" was that she had wanted. She had never been unhappy, but only
vaguely dissatisfied, and sometimes bored.

This morning her waking sense of well-being did not fade as she came to
full consciousness, but started into full pleasure as she remembered
that her cousins, Angela and Beatrice Birket, with their father and
mother, were in the house. And Dick and Humphrey had come d