‘And Mr. White is the right man to dispose of them.’

No more passed, for here were the children eager and important, doing the honours of the new house, and intensely happy at the sense of home, which with them depended more on persons than on place.

One schoolroom again,’ said Mysie.  ’One again with Val and Prim and Miss Vincent.  Oh, it is happiness!’

Even Mrs. Halfpenny was a delightful sight, perhaps the more so that her rightful dominion was over; the nursery was no more, and she was only to preside in the workroom, be generally useful, wait on my lady, and look after Primrose as far as was needful.

The bustle and excitement of settling in prevented much thought of the Whites, even from Gillian, during that evening and the next morning; and she was ashamed of her own oblivion of her friend in the new current of ideas, when she found that her father meant to attend the funeral out of respect to his old fellow-soldier.

Rockquay had outgrown its churchyard, and had a cemetery half a mile off, so that people had to go in carriages.  Mr. White had made himself responsible for expenses, and thus things were not so utterly dreary as poverty might have made them.  It was a dreary, gusty March day, with driving rushes of rain, which had played wildly with Gillian’s waterproof while she was getting such blossoms and evergreen leaves as her aunt’s garden afforded, not out of love for the poor Queen of the White Ants herself, but thinking the attention might gratify the daughters; and her elders moralised a little on the use and abuse of wreaths, and how the manifestation of tender affection and respect had in many cases been imitated in empty and expensive compliment.

‘The world spoils everything with its coarse finger,’ said Lady Merrifield.

’I hope the custom will not be exaggerated altogether out of fashion,’ said Jane.  ’It is a real comfort to poor little children at funerals to have one to carry, and it is as Mrs. Gaskell’s Margaret said of mourning, something to prevent settling to doing nothing but crying; besides that afterwards there is a wholesome sweetness in thus keeping up the memory.’

Sir Jasper shared a carriage with Mr. White, and returned somewhat wet and very cold, and saying that it had been sadly bleak and wretched for the poor young people, who stood trembling, so far as he could see; and he was anxious to know how the poor girls were after it.  It had seemed to him as if Kalliope could scarcely stand.  He proved to be right.  Kalliope had said nothing, not wept demonstratively, perhaps not at all; but when the carriage stopped at the door, she proved to be sunk back in her corner in a dead faint.  She was very long in reviving, and no sooner tried to move than she swooned again, and this time it lasted so long that the doctor was sent for.  Miss Mohun arrived just as he had partially restored her, and they had a conversation.