At one and the same moment the man and woman of the world took a new view of the situation, looked at one another, and burst out laughing.  Both these carried a safety-valve against choler—­a trait that takes us into many follies, but keeps us out of others—­a sense of humor.  The next thing to relieve the situation was the senior’s comprehensive vanity.  He must recover young Arthur’s reverence, which was doubtless dissolving all this time.  “Now, Arthur,” he whispered, “take a lesson from a gentleman of the old school.  I hate this she-devil; but this is at my house, so—­observe.”  He then strutted jauntily and feebly up to Mrs. Bazalgette:  “Madam, my niece says you are her guest; but permit me to dispute her title to that honor.”  Mrs. Bazalgette smiled agreeably.  She wanted to stay a day or two at Font Abbey.  The senior flourished out his arm.  “Let me show you what we call the garden here.”  She took his arm graciously.  “I shall be delighted, sir [pompous old fool!].”

Mrs. Bazalgette steeled her mind to admire the garden, and would have done so with ease if it had been hideous.  But, unfortunately, it was pretty—­prettier than her own; had grassy slopes, a fountain, a grotto, variegated beds, and beds a blaze of one color (a fashion not common at that time); item, a brook with waterlilies on its bosom.  “This brook is not mine, strictly speaking,” said her host; “I borrowed it of my neighbor.”  The lady opened her eyes; so he grinned and revealed a characteristic transaction.  A quarter of a century ago he had found the brook flowing through a meadow close to his garden hedge.  He applied for a lease of the meadow, and was refused by the proprietor in the following terms:  “What is to become of my cows?”

He applied constantly for ten years, and met the same answer.  Proprietor died, the cows turned to ox-beef, and were eaten in London along with flour and a little turmeric, and washed down with Spanish licorice-water, salt, gentian and a little burned malt.  Widow inherited, made hay, and refused F. the meadow because her husband had always refused him.  But in the tenth year of her siege she assented, for the following reasons:  primo, she had said “no” so often the word gave her a sense of fatigue; secundo, she liked variety, and thought a change for the worse must be better than no change at all.

Her tenant instantly cut a channel from the upper part of the stream into his garden, and brought the brook into the lawn, made it write an S upon his turf, then handed it but again upon the meadow “none the worse,” his own comment.  These things could be done in the country—­jadis.

It cost Mrs. Bazalgette a struggle to admire the garden and borrowed stream—­they were so pretty.  She made the struggle and praised all.  Lucy, walking behind the pair, watched them with innocent satisfaction.  “How fast they are making friends,” thought she, mistaking an armistice for an alliance.