“Confound you, you’ve got me in a corner!” he muttered.  “That’s what I don’t like.  If you had come out in the open with your plans—­”

“You’d have refused me.”

“You just said you counted on my generosity.  If you were so sure of it, why didn’t you ask for it?”

Jarvis laughed.  “Oh, be reasonable!  Don’t you let people plot, at Christmas time and on birthdays, to take you by surprise?  You hardly call it not being in the open because they don’t ask your permission to present you with a house-jacket or a fountain-pen!”

The horses trotted briskly on, quiet ensuing behind them for a little while.  Max fell into a sulky silence; Sally into a happy one, as she leaned out, watching for the final turn in the road before the pines should come into sight.  Jarvis was wondering just how Max would behave, and hoping that Sally’s pleasure would blind her eyes to her brother’s dissatisfaction.  He was counting a good deal on the impression his camp would make.  As he thought it would look in the moonlight, with a little camp fire before it, it seemed to him it must appeal to anybody.

Sally gave a little cry.  “There’s the grove!  How big and dark it looms up at night!  I can smell it before I get near it—­in my imagination.  I’ve been smelling it all these hot days, and longing for it.  Oh, what’s that at the back?  Didn’t you see a flash of something?”

Sally was fairly hanging out of the carriage, her gaze feasting on the cool depths of gloom under the tall trees, when she caught sight of the little leaping flames of the camp fire.

“Somebody must be in there,” agreed Josephine.  “Perhaps it’s Mr. Ferry, who lives next door, in the white cottage.  Remember my telling you about him?  Max gave him leave to inhabit the grove all he liked.”

“Everything’s so dry, he might set it on fire,” considered Sally anxiously.

“You won’t fear any such carelessness on his part when you see him,” Josephine assured her confidently.

The carriage turned in at the gate.  In another minute it had reached a point where the tent began to show from behind a clump of bushes.  Sally’s hand clutched Max’s shoulder.  Her brother was ill-humouredly surveying the signs of occupancy of the debatable ground.

“Why, there’s a tent there!” she cried.  “A big tent, and some one in front!  Who is it—­do you know?” She turned excitedly to Josephine; then she touched Jarvis’s shoulder.  “I seem to be doing all the exclaiming,” she declared.  “You people must know about this.  Is it—­is it a surprise?”

“It seems to be,” replied Jarvis, turning to see her face, as the fire-light struck it, aglow with wonder and anticipation.

Josephine caught her hand.  “It’s on your land, Sally dear,” she said.  “Do you mind?”

“Did it ever strike you,” said Jarvis, quickly, in Max’s ear, “that this is Sally’s land, and Alec’s, and Bob’s, quite as much as yours?”