Mrs. Shaw examined and duly admired the camera, and decided in favor of a blue dot; then she said, “Mrs. Boyd is down-stairs, Hilary.”

“How nice!” Hilary jumped up.  “I want to see her most particularly.”

“Bless me, child!” Mrs. Boyd exclaimed, as Hilary came into the sitting-room, “how you are getting on!  Why, you don’t look like the same girl of three weeks back.”

Hilary sat down beside her on the sofa.  “I’ve got a most tremendous favor to ask, Mrs. Boyd.”

“I’m glad to hear that!  I hear you young folks are having fine times lately.  Shirley was telling me about the club the other night.”

“It’s about the club—­and it’s in two parts; first, won’t you and Mr. Boyd be honorary members?—­That means you can come to the good times if you like, you know.—­And the other is—­you see, it’s my turn next—­” And when Pauline came down, she found the two deep in consultation.

The next afternoon, Patience carried out her long-intended plan of calling at the manor.  Mrs. Shaw was from home for the day, Pauline and Hilary were out in the trap with Tom and Josie and the camera.  “So there’s really no one to ask permission of, Towser,” Patience explained, as they started off down the back lane.  “Father’s got the study door closed, of course that means he mustn’t be disturbed for anything unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

Towser wagged comprehendingly.  He was quite ready for a ramble this bright afternoon, especially a ramble ’cross lots.

Shirley and her father were not at home, neither—­which was even more disappointing—­were any of the dogs; so, after a short chat with Betsy Todd, considerably curtailed by that body’s too frankly expressed wonder that Patience should’ve been allowed to come unattended by any of her elders, she and Towser wandered home again.

In the lane, they met Sextoness Jane, sitting on the roadside, under a shady tree.  She and Patience exchanged views on parish matters, discussed the new club, and had an all-round good gossip.

“My sakes!” Jane said, her faded eyes bright with interest, “it must seem like Christmas all the time up to your house.”  She looked past Patience to the old church beyond, around which her life had centered itself for so many years.  “There weren’t ever such doings at the parsonage—­nor anywhere else, what I knowed of—­when I was a girl.  Why, that Bedelia horse!  Seems like she give an air to the whole place—­so pretty and high-stepping—­it’s most’s good’s a circus—­not that I’ve ever been to a circus, but I’ve hear tell on them—­just to see her go prancing by.”

“I think,” Patience said that evening, as they were all sitting on the porch in the twilight, “I think that Jane would like awfully to belong to our club.”

“Have you started a club, too?” Pauline teased.

Patience tossed her red head. “‘The S. W. F. Club,’ I mean; and you know it, Paul Shaw.  When I get to be fifteen, I shan’t act half so silly as some folks.”