Vernon’s dancing in America was capitally described by Willoughby.  “Adieu to our cousins!” the latter wrote on his voyage to Japan.  “I may possibly have had some vogue in their ball-rooms, and in showing them an English seat on horseback:  I must resign myself if I have not been popular among them.  I could not sing their national song—­if a congery of states be a nation—­and I must confess I listened with frigid politeness to their singing of it.  A great people, no doubt.  Adieu to them.  I have had to tear old Vernon away.  He had serious thoughts of settling, means to correspond with some of them.”  On the whole, forgetting two or more “traits of insolence” on the part of his hosts, which he cited, Willoughby escaped pretty comfortably.  The President had been, consciously or not, uncivil, but one knew his origin!  Upon these interjections, placable flicks of the lionly tail addressed to Britannia the Ruler, who expected him in some mildish way to lash terga cauda in retiring, Sir Willoughby Patterne passed from a land of alien manners; and ever after he spoke of America respectfully and pensively, with a tail tucked in, as it were.  His travels were profitable to himself.  The fact is, that there are cousins who come to greatness and must be pacified, or they will prove annoying.  Heaven forefend a collision between cousins!

Willoughby returned to his England after an absence of three years.  On a fair April morning, the last of the month, he drove along his park palings, and, by the luck of things, Laetitia was the first of his friends whom he met.  She was crossing from field to field with a band of school-children, gathering wild flowers for the morrow May-day.  He sprang to the ground and seized her hand.  “Laetitia Dale!” he said.  He panted.  “Your name is sweet English music!  And you are well?” The anxious question permitted him to read deeply in her eyes.  He found the man he sought there, squeezed him passionately, and let her go, saying:  “I could not have prayed for a lovelier home-scene to welcome me than you and these children flower-gathering.  I don’t believe in chance.  It was decreed that we should meet.  Do not you think so?”

Laetitia breathed faintly of her gladness.

He begged her to distribute a gold coin among the little ones; asked for the names of some of them, and repeated:  “Mary, Susan, Charlotte—­only the Christian names, pray!  Well, my dears, you will bring your garlands to the Hall to-morrow morning; and mind, early! no slugabeds tomorrow; I suppose I am browned, Laetitia?” He smiled in apology for the foreign sun, and murmured with rapture:  “The green of this English country is unsurpassed.  It is wonderful.  Leave England and be baked, if you would appreciate it.  You can’t, unless you taste exile as I have done—­for how many years?  How many?”

“Three,” said Laetitia.