‘Do you think she is in love, then?’

’Oh yes!  People always do those things in love.  Besides, the Sofi hasn’t got a single white hair in her, and you know what that always means!’

’I can’t make it out!  I can’t think how Aunt Jane can be in love with a great man like that.  His voice isn’t nice, you know—–­’

‘Not even as sweet as Bully Bottom’s,’ suggested Gillian.

‘You’re a chit,’ said Jasper, ’or you’d be superior to the notion of love being indispensable.’

‘When people are so very old,’ said Mysie in a meditative voice, ’perhaps they can’t; but Aunt Jane is very good—–­and I thought it was only horrid worldly people that married without love.’

‘Trust your good woman for looking to the main chance,’ said Jasper, who was better read in Trollope and Mrs. Oliphant than his sisters.

‘’Tis not main chance,’ said Gillian.  ’Think of the lots of good she would do!  What a recreation room for the girls, and what schools she would set up at Rocca Marina!  Depend upon it, it’s for that!’

‘I suppose it is right if Aunt Jane does it,’ said Mysie.

‘Well done, Mysie!  So, Aunt Jane is your Pope!’

‘No; she’s the King that can do no wrong,’ said Gillian, laughing.

’Wrong—–­I didn’t say wrong—–­but things aren’t always real wrong that aren’t somehow quite right, said Mysie, with the bewildered reasoning of perceptions that outran her powers of expression.

‘Mysie’s speeches, for instance,’ said Jasper.

‘Oh, Japs, what did I say wrong?’

‘Don’t tease her, Japs.  He didn’t mean morally, but correctly.’

The three were on their way up the hill when they met Primrose, who had accompanied Mrs. Halfpenny to see Kalliope, and who was evidently in a state of such great discomposure that they all stood round to ask what was the matter; but she hung down her head and would not say.

‘Hoots! toots!  I tell her she need not make such a work about it,’ said Mrs. Halfpenny.  ’The honest man did but kiss her, and no harm for her uncle that is to be.’

’He’s a nasty man!  And he snatched me up!  And he is all scrubby and tobacco-ey, and I won’t have him for an uncle,’ cried Primrose.

‘I hope he is not going to proceed in that way,’ said Gillian sotto voce to Mysie.

‘People always do snatch up primroses,’ said Jasper.

’Don’t, Japs!  I don’t like marble men.  I wish they would stay marble.’

‘You don’t approve of the transformation?’

’Oh, Japs, is it true?  Mysie, you know the statue at Rotherwood, where Pig-my-lion made a stone figure and it turned into a woman.’

‘Yes; but it was a woman and this is a man.’