The kitchen windows looked on a street made by a line of buildings parallel with the house.  These were the stables and outhouses, and they formed one of the walls of the garden that lay behind, sheltered on the north side by a thin curtain of beeches, filled every evening with noisy rooks; and, coming round to the front of the house, the girls lingered beneath the chestnut-trees, and in the rosary, where a little fountain played when visitors were present, and then stood leaning over the wooden paling that defended the pleasure-ground from the cows that grazed in the generous expanse of grass extending up to the trees of the Lawler domain.  Brookfield was therefore without pretensions—­it could hardly be called ’a place’—­but, manifolded in dreams past and present, it extended indefinitely before Alice’s eyes, and, absorbed by the sad sweetness of retrospection, she lingered while Olive ran through the rosary from the stables and back again, calling to her sister, making the sunlight ring with her light laughter.  She refrained, therefore, from reminding her that it was here they used to play with Nell, the old setter, and that it was there they gave bread to the blind beggar; Olive had no heart for these things, and when she admired the sleek carriage-horses that had lately been bought to take them to balls and tennis-parties, Alice thought of the old brown mare that used to take them for such delightful drives.

Suddenly Mrs. Barton’s voice was heard calling.  Milord had arrived:  they were to go into the garden and pick a few flowers to make a buttonhole for him.  Olive darted off at once to execute the commission, and soon returned with a rose set round with stephanotis.  The old lord, seated in the dining-room, in an arm-chair which Mrs. Barton had drawn up to the window so that he might enjoy the air, sipped his sherry, and Alice, as she entered the room, heard him say: 

‘Quand on aime on est toujours bien portant.’

She stopped abruptly, and Mrs. Barton, who already suspected her of secret criticism, whispered, as she glided across the room: 

‘Now, my dear girl, go and talk to Milord and make yourself agreeable.’

The girl felt she was incapable of this, and it pained her to listen to her sister’s facile hilarity, and her mother’s coaxing observations.  Milord did not, however, neglect her; he made suitable remarks concerning her school successes, and asked appropriate questions anent her little play of King Cophetua.  But whatever interest the subject possessed was found in the fact that Olive had taken the part of the Princess; and, re-arranging the story a little, Mrs. Barton declared, with a shower of little laughs, and many waves of the white hands, that ’my lady there had refused a King; a nice beginning, indeed, and a pleasant future for her chaperon.’

The few books the house possessed lay on the drawing-room table, or were piled, in dusty confusion, in the bookcase in Mr. Barton’s studio; and, thinking of them, Alice determined she would pay her father a visit in his studio.