on in a succession of little skips, and pirouetting round
to clap her hands, and exclaim, 'Oh! Robin, is it not delightful?'

'If they will let you go,' said he, too desponding for hope.

'Do you think they will not?' said Phoebe, with slower and graver steps.
'Do you really think so? But no! It can't lead to coming out; and I
know they like me to be happy when it interferes with nobody.'

'Great generosity,' said Robert, dryly.

'Oh, but, Robin, you know elder ones come first.'

'A truth we are not likely to forget,' said Robert. 'I wish my uncle had
been sensible of it. That legacy of his stands between Mervyn and me,
and will never do me any good.'

'I don't understand,' said Phoebe; 'Mervyn has always been completely the
eldest son.'

'Ay,' returned Robert, 'and with the tastes of an eldest son. His
allowance does not suffice for them, and he does not like to see me
independent. If my uncle had only been contented to let us share and
share alike, then my father would have had no interest in drawing me into
the precious gin and brandy manufacture.'

'You did not think he meant to make it a matter of obedience,' said
Phoebe.

'No; he could hardly do that after the way he has brought me up, and what
we have been taught all our lives about liberty of the individual,
absence of control, and the like jargon.'

'Then you are not obliged?'

He made no answer, and they walked on in silence across the silvery lawn,
the maythorns shining out like flaked towers of snow in the moonlight,
and casting abyss-like shadows, the sky of the most deep and intense
blue, and the carols of the nightingales ringing around them. Robert
paused when he had passed through the gate leading into the dark path
down-hill through the wood, and setting his elbows on it, leant over it,
and looked back at the still and beautiful scene, in all the white
mystery of moonlight, enhanced by the white-blossomed trees and the soft
outlines of slumbering sheep. One of the birds, in a bush close to them,
began prolonging its drawn-in notes in a continuous prelude, then
breaking forth into a varied complex warbling, so wondrous that there was
no moving till the creature paused.

It seemed to have been a song of peace to Robert, for he gave a long but
much softer sigh, and pushed back his hat, saying, 'All good things dwell
on the Holt side of the boundary.'

'A sort of Sunday world,' said Phoebe.

'Yes; after this wood one is in another