9.—­What a delightful sight is a large family of young things together!  The party is complete, for the Druces arrived yesterday evening in full force, torn from their bucolic life, as Martyn tells them.  My poor dear old Margaret!  She does indeed look worn and aged, dragged by cares like a colonist’s wife, and her husband is quite bald, and as spare as a hermit.  It is hard to believe him younger than Martyn; but then his whole soul is set on Bourne Parva, and hers on him, on the children, on the work, and on making both ends meet; and they toil five times more severely in one month than the professor and his lady in a year, besides having just twice as many children, all of whom are here except the schoolboys.  Margaret declares that the entire rest, and the talking to something not entirely rural, will wind her husband up for the year; and it is good to see her sitting in a basket-chair by my mother, knitting indeed, but they both do that like breathing, while they purr away to one another in a state of perfect repose and felicity.  Meantime her husband talks Oxford with Martyn and Mary.  Their daughter Jane seems to be a most valuable helper to both, but she too has a worn, anxious countenance, and I fear she may be getting less rest than her parents, as they have brought only one young nursemaid with them, and seem to depend on her and Meg for keeping the middle-sized children in order.  She seems to have all the cares of the world on her young brow, and is much exercised about one of the boxes which has gone astray on the railway.  What do you think she did this morning?  She started off with Avice at eight o’clock for the S. Clements station to see if the telegram was answered, and they went on to the Convalescent Home and saw the Oxford dressmaker.  It seems that Avice had taken Uchtred with her on Sunday evening, made out the place, and gone to church at S. Clements close by—­a very long walk; but it seems that those foolish girls thought me too fine a lady to like to be seen with her in her round hat on a Sunday.  I wish they could understand what it is that I dislike.  If I objected to appearances, I am afraid the poor Druces would fare ill.  Margaret’s girls cannot help being essentially ladies, but they have not much beauty to begin with—­and their dress!  It was chiefly made by their own sewing machine, with the assistance of the Bourne Parva mantua-maker, superintended by Jane, ’to prevent her from making it foolish’; and the effect, I grieve to say, is ill-fitting dowdiness, which becomes grotesque from their self-complacent belief that it displays the only graceful and sensible fashion in the place.  It was laughable to hear them criticising every hat or costume they have seen, quite unaware that they were stared at themselves, till Charley told them people thought they had come fresh out of Lady Bountiful’s goody-box, which piece of impertinence they took as a great compliment to their wisdom and excellence.