The first voice that came out of the melee was Valetta’s.  ’Gill is grown quite a lady!’

‘How much improved!’ exclaimed Aunt Ada.

‘The Bachfisch has swum into the river,’ was Aunt Jane’s comment.

‘She’ll never be good for anything jolly—–­no scrambling!’ grumbled Fergus.

’Now Fergus! didn’t Kitty Somerville and I scramble when we found the gate locked, and thought we saw the spiteful stag, and that he was going to run at us?’

‘I’m afraid that was rather on compulsion, Gill.’

’It wasn’t the spiteful stag after all, but we had such a long way to come home, and got over the park wall at last by the help of the limb of a tree.  We had been taking a bit of wedding-cake to Frank Somerville’s old nurse, and Kitty told her I was her maiden aunt, and we had such fun—–­her uncle’s wife’s sister, you know.’

‘We sent a great piece of our wedding-cake to the Whites,’ put in Valetta.  ’Fergus and I took it on Saturday afternoon, but nobody was at home but Mrs. White, and she is fatter than ever.’

‘I say, Gill, which is the best formation, Vale Leston or Rowthorpe?’

‘Oh, nobody is equal to Geraldine; but Kitty is a dear thing.’

’I didn’t mean that stuff, but which had the best strata and specimens ?’

‘Geological, he means—–­not of society,’ interposed Aunt Jane.

’Oh yes!  Harry said he had gone geology mad, and I really did get you a bit of something at Vale Leston, Fergus, that Mr. Harewood said was worth having.  Was it an encrinite?  I know it was a stone-lily.’

‘An encrinite!  Oh, scrumptious!’

Then ensued such an unpacking as only falls to the lot of home-comers from London, within the later precincts of Christmas, gifts of marvellous contrivance and novelty, as well as cheapness, for all and sundry, those reserved for others almost as charming to the beholders as those which fell to their own lot.  The box, divided into compartments, transported Fergus as much as the encrinite; Valetta had a photograph-book, and, more diffidently, Gillian presented Aunt Ada with a graceful little statuette in Parian, and Aunt Jane with the last novelty in baskets.  There were appropriate keepsakes for the maids, and likewise for Kalliope and Maura.  Aunt Jane was glad to see that discretion had prevailed so as to confine these gifts to the female part of the White family.  There were other precious articles in reserve for the absent; and the display of Gillian’s own garments was not without interest, as she had been to her first ball, under the chaperonage of Lady Somerville, and Mrs. Grinstead had made her white tarletan available by painting it and its ribbons with exquisite blue nemophilas, too lovely for anything so fleeting.