“You couldn’t go on living with me here,” he said; “I mean, I couldn’t go on living with you; it wouldn’t be the thing, you know; you must think of that.”

Julia caught her breath between tears and laughter, but he went on stoutly:  “I shall go back to town, to Mrs. Horn; I shall like it—­at least when I get used to it.  It is quite time I went back to town; a man ought not to stay too long in the country; he gets rusty.”

“You won’t go back to town,” Julia said; “you will never do that.  You will stay here in the cottage, and Mrs. Gray from next door to the shop will come and live here as your housekeeper; I am going to arrange it with her.  She will come and she will bring her little grand-daughter and you will keep on living here always.”

For a moment Johnny’s face beamed; the prospect was exquisite; but he sternly put it from him.  “No,” he said, “I shouldn’t like that; it’s kind of you, but—­”

“Johnny,” Julia interrupted, “you should always speak the truth—­you do anything else so badly!  I don’t mind if you like my plan or not, you will have to put up with it to help me; some one must take care of the cottage.”

“But you will want to come yourself,” Mr. Gillat protested.

“Never, unless you are here.”

In the end Julia had her way.  Johnny lived at the cottage, and Mrs. Gray and her grandchild came to keep house.  And Billy, Mrs. Gray’s nephew, came to help in the garden and take care of the donkey; in the spring there was a donkey added to the establishment, and a little tub-cart which held four children easily, besides Mr. Gillat.  And it is doubtful if, in all the country round, there was a happier man than he who tended Julia’s plants in Julia’s garden, and drove parties of chattering children along the quiet lanes, and sat on warm summer evenings beside his old friend’s grave in Halgrave churchyard.  He had forgotten many things, old slights and old pains, and old losses; forgotten, perhaps, most things except love.  Foolish Johnny, God’s fool, basking in God’s sunshine.

And Julia and Rawson-Clew were married, very quietly, without any pomp or ostentation at all.  And if, on the honeymoon, he did not show her all the places he had thought of on the day when he travelled north with the girl with the carnations, it was because he had not several years at his disposal just then.  Afterwards he made up for it as work allowed and time could be found.  In the record of their lives there are many days noted down as holidays, even such holidays as that first one spent on the Dunes.  In the springtime, when the bulb flowers were in bloom, they went once more to the Dunes and to the little old town where the Van Heigens lived.  They were received with much ceremony by Mijnheer and his wife, and entertained at a dinner which lasted from four till half-past six.  It is true that afterwards state had to be lain aside, for Julia insisted on helping to wash the