A party of garden-chairs on the lawn invited repose, and there the ladies seated themselves; Fanny laying down her heavy crape bonnet, and showing her pretty little delicate face, now much fresher and more roseate than when she arrived, though her wide-spreading black draperies gave a certain dignity to her slight figure, contrasting with the summer muslins of her two cousins; as did her hot-house plant fairness, with their firm, healthy glow of complexion; her tender shrinking grace, with their upright vigour.  The gentleman of the party leant hack in a languid, easy posture, as though only half awake, and the whole was so quiet that Grace, missing the usual tumult of children, asked after them.

“The boys have gone to their favourite cove under the plantation.  They have a fort there, and Hubert told me he was to be a hero, and Miss Williams a she-ro.”

“I would not encourage that description of sport,” said Rachel, willing to fight a battle in order to avert maternal anecdotes of boyish sayings.

“They like it so much,” said Fanny, “and they learn so much now that they act all the battles they read about.”

“That is what I object to,” said Rachel; “it is accustoming them to confound heroism with pugnacity.”

“No, but Rachel dear, they do quarrel and fight among themselves much less now that this is all in play and good humour,” pleaded Fanny.

“Yes, that may be, but you are cultivating the dangerous instinct, although for a moment giving it a better direction.”

“Dangerous?  Oh, Alick! do you think it can be?” said Fanny, less easily borne down with a supporter beside her.

“According to the Peace Society,” he answered, with a quiet air of courteous deference; “perhaps you belong to it?”

“No, indeed,” answered Rachel, rather indignantly, “I think war the great purifier and ennobler of nations, when it is for a good and great cause; but I think education ought to protest against confounding mere love of combat with heroism.”

“Query, the true meaning of the word?” he said, leaning back.

“Heros, yes from the same root as the German herr,” readily responded Rachel, “meaning no more than lord and master; but there can be no doubt that the progress of ideas has linked with it a much nobler association.”

“Progress!  What, since the heroes were half divine!”

“Half divine in the esteem of a people who thought brute courage godlike.  To us the word maintains its semi-divinity, and it should be our effort to associate it only with that which veritably has the god-like stamp.”

“And that is—?”

“Doing more than one’s duty,” exclaimed Rachel, with a glistening eye.

“Very uncomfortable and superfluous, and not at all easy,” he said, half shutting his already heavy eyes.

“Easy, no, that’s the beauty and the glory—­”

“Major Sherborne and Captain Lester in the drawing room, my lady,” announced Coombe, who had looked infinitely cheered since this military influx.