’Don’t be tyrannical, then.  You are walking me out of breath, and we are cutting Mrs. Goodenough, in our hurry.’

So they crossed over the street to speak to Mrs. Goodenough.

’We’ve just been seeing my wife and her daughter off to London.  Mrs Gibson has gone up for a week!’

’Deary, deary, to London, and only for a week!  Why, I can remember its being a three days’ journey!  It will be very lonesome for you, Miss Molly, without your young companion!’

‘Yes!’ said Molly, suddenly feeling as if she ought to have taken this view of the case.  ‘I shall miss Cynthia very much.’

’And you, Mr. Gibson; why, it will be like being a widower over again!  You must come and drink tea with me some evening.  We must try and cheer you up a bit amongst us.  Shall it be Tuesday?’

In spite of the sharp pinch which Molly gave to his arm, Mr. Gibson accepted the invitation, much to the gratification of the old lady.

’Papa, how could you go and waste one of our evenings.  We have but six in all, and now but five; and I had so reckoned on our doing all sorts of things together.’

‘What sort of things?’

‘Oh, I don’t know:  everything that is unrefined and ungenteel,’ added she, slyly looking up into her father’s face.

His eyes twinkled, but the rest of his face was perfectly grave.  ’I’m not going to be corrupted.  With toil and labour I have reached a very fair height of refinement.  I won’t be pulled down again.’

’Yes, you will, papa.  We’ll have bread and cheese for lunch this very day.  And you shall wear your slippers in the drawing-room every evening you’ll stay quietly at home; and oh, papa, don’t you think I could ride Nora Creina.  I’ve been looking out the old grey skirt, and I think I could make myself tidy.’

‘Where is the side-saddle to come from?’

’To be sure the old one won’t fit that great Irish mare.  But I’m not particular, papa.  I think I could manage somehow.’

’Thank you.  But I’m not quite going to return into barbarism.  It may he a depraved taste, but I should like to see my daughter properly mounted.’

’Think of riding together down the lanes—­why, the dog-roses must be all out in flower, and the honeysuckles, and the hay—­how I should like to see Merriman’s farm again!  Papa, do let me have one ride with you!  Please do.  I am sure we can manage it somehow.’

And ‘somehow’ it was managed.  ‘Somehow’ all Molly’s wishes came to pass; there was only one little drawback to this week of holiday and happy intercourse with her father.  Everybody would ask them out to tea.  They were quite like bride and bridegroom; for the fact was, that the late dinners which Mrs. Gibson had introduced into her own house, were a great inconvenience in the calculations of the small tea-drinkings at Hollingford.  How ask people to tea at six, who dined at that hour?  How, when they refused cake and sandwiches at half-past