There was no doing it on this day.  Carey was always surrounded by children and guests, and in an eager state of activity; but though again they all went home in the cool of the evening, an attempt to sing in the second-class carriage, which they filled entirely, was quashed immediately-—no one knew how, and nothing worse happened than that a very dusty set, carrying odd botanical, entomological, and artistic wares, trailed through the streets of Kenminster, just as Mrs. Coffinkey, escorted by her maid, was walking primly home from drinking tea at the vicarage.

Still Mary’s reflections only strengthened her resolution.  On the next day, which was Sunday, she ascended to the Folly, at about four o’clock in the afternoon, and found the family, including the parrot, spread out upon the lawn under the shade of the acacia, the mother reading to them.

“Oh, please don’t stop, mother,” cried Babie; while the more courteous Armine exclaimed—-

“Miss Ogilvie, don’t you like to hear about Bevis and Jocelin Joliffe?”

“You don’t mind waiting while we finish the chapter,” added their mother; “then we break up our sitting.”

“Pray go on with the chapter,” said Mary, rather coolly, for she was a good deal taken aback at finding them reading “Woodstock” on a Sunday; “but afterwards, I do want to speak to you.”

“Oh! don’t want to speak to me.  The Colonel has been speaking to me,” she said, with a cowering, shuddering sort of action, irresistibly comic.

“And he ate up half our day,” bemoaned more than one of the boys.

Miss Ogilvie sat down a little way off, not wishing to listen to “Woodstock” on a Sunday, and trying to work out the difficult Sabbatarian question in her mind.

“There!” said Caroline, closing the book, amid exclamations of “I know who Lewis Kerneguy was.”  “Wasn’t Roger Wildrake jolly?” “O, mother, didn’t he cut off Trusty Tomkins’ head?” “Do let us have a wee bit more, mother; Miss Ogilvie won’t mind.”

But Carey saw that she did mind, and answered—-

“Not now; there won’t be time to feed all the creatures, or to get nurse’s Sunday nosegays, if you don’t begin.  Then, coming up to her guest, she said, “Now is your time, Mary; we shall have the Rays and Mr. Hughes in presently; but you see we are too worldly and profane for the Kencroft boys on Sunday; and so they make experiments in smoking, with company less desirable, I must say, than Sir Harry Lee’s.  Am I very bad to read what keeps mine round me?”

“Is it an old fashion with you?”

“Well, no; but then we had what was better than a thousand stories!  And this is only a feeble attempt to keep up a little watery reflection of the old sunshine.”

It was a watery reflection indeed!

“And could it not be with something that would be-—”

“Dull and goody?” put in Carey.  “No, no, my dear, that would be utterly futile.  You can’t catch my birds without salt.  Can we, Polly?”