“And the next experience is to be at Red Creek?” Justin asked, delighted with this addition to the family circle and beaming about upon everyone.

“Mr. Lloyd is there now,” Cherry smiled.  “Do you know Red Creek?—­ I’ll have to call you Justin, since you’re going to be my cousin so soon,” she interrupted herself to say shyly.

“No—­I—­er—­I—­er—­don’t!” Justin stammered.

Anne said vivaciously: 

“Of course you’re to call him Justin!  And he’s to call you Cherry, too—­those are my orders, Frenny, and don’t you dare disobey!”

“But did you get onto the artful and engaging smile Justin gave Cherry?” Alix giggled later to Peter.  She and Peter were in the pantry, deep in the manufacture of a certain sort of canape.  “Why, he was all in a heap over her!” continued Alix elegantly, as she sampled a small piece of smeared toast with a severe and wrinkled brow.  “Try a little mustard in it,” she suggested, adding confidentially, “You know Cherry is really too pretty for any use!  The rest of us can diet for complexion or diet for figures, and this hat will be becoming or that dress will always look well—­but Cherry, why, she just knocks us all galley-west!  What’s the use of struggling and brushing your hair and worrying about your clothes, when a girl like Cherry will come along and sit down and have everybody staring!”

“She is, of course, quite extraordinary!” Peter conceded as he punched two small holes in the top of a tin of olive oil.  The oil welled up through the holes and he wiped his fingers on a corner of Alix’s apron.

“It’s just the difference,” Alix said, “between being nice looking, which half the women in the word are, and being a beauty.  I remember that when Cherry was only about ten I used to look at her and think that there was something rather—­well, rather arresting about her face.  It was such an aristocratic little face.  I remember her in those old bluejacket blouses—­”

“Yes, I do, too!” Peter said quickly, straightening up from restoring the vinegar demijohn to an obscure position in a lower cupboard.  “Well—­These have to go in the oven now; I’ll take them out.  Aren’t you going to change for dinner?  It’s after six now!”

“Since you ask me, I’ll see what frock Deshabille has laid out!” Alix yawned, disappearing in the direction of the sitting room, where he found her a few minutes later absorbed in a book.

The evening was cooler, with sudden wind and a promise of storm.  They grouped themselves about a fire in the old way; Anne and Justin sitting close together on the settle, as Martin and Cherry had done a year ago.  Cherry sat next her father with her hand linked in his; neither hand moved for a long, long time.  Alix, sitting on the floor, with her lean cheeks painted by the fire, played with the dog and rallied Peter about some love affair, the details of which made him laugh vexedly in spite of himself.  Cherry watched them, a little puzzled at the familiarity of Peter beside this fire; had he been so entirely one of the family a year ago?  She could almost envy him, feeling herself removed by so long and strange a twelvemonth.