A few days after this Emily was coming down the lane leading to John Mortimer’s house, having taken leave of Justina at the railway station.  She was reading a letter just received from Valentine, signed for the first time in full, Valentine Melcombe.  The young gentleman, it appeared, was quite as full of fun as ever; had been to Visp and Rifflesdorf, and other of those places—­found them dull on the whole—­had taken a bath.  “And you may judge of the smell of the water,” he went on to his sister, “when I tell you that I fell asleep after it, and dreamt I was a bad egg.  I hoped I shouldn’t hatch into a bad fellow.  I’ve been here three days and seen nobody; the population (chiefly Catholic) consists of three goats, a cock and hen, and a small lake!”

Here lifting up her head as she passed by John’s gate, Emily observed extraordinary signs of festivity about the place.  Flags protruded from various bedroom windows, wreaths and flowers dangling at the end of long poles from others, rows of dolls dressed in their best sat in state on the lower boughs of larches, together with tinsel butterflies, frail balloons, and other gear not often seen excepting on Christmas-trees.

It was Saturday afternoon, a half-holiday; the two little boys, who were weekly pupils of a clergyman in the immediate neighbourhood, always came home at that auspicious time, and there remained till Monday morning.

From one of them Emily learned that some epidemic having broken out at Harrow, in the “house” where Johnnie was, the boys had been dispersed, and Johnnie, having been already in quarantine a fortnight, had now come home, and the place had been turned out of windows to welcome him.

“And Cray is at Mr. Brandon’s,” said Bertie, “but on Monday they are both to go to Mr. Tikey’s with us.”

Something aloft very large and black at this moment startled Emily.  Johnnie, who had climbed up a tall poplar tree, and was shaking it portentously, began to let himself down apparently at the peril of his life, and the girls at the same moment coming out of the house, welcomed Emily, letting her know that their father had given them a large, lovely cuckoo clock to hangup in Parliament.  “And you shall come and see it,” they said.  Emily knew this was a most unusual privilege.  “Johnnie is not gone up there to look for nests,” said Gladys, “but to reconnoitre the country.  If we let you know what for, you won’t tell?”

“Certainly not,” said Emily, and she was borne off to Parliament, feeling a curiosity to see it, because John had fitted it up for the special and exclusive delectation of his young brood.  It embodied his notion of what children would delight in.

An extraordinary place indeed she thought it.  At least fifty feet long, and at the end farthest from the house, without carpet.  A carpenter’s bench, many tools, and some machines were there, shavings strewed the floor; something, evidently meant to turn out a wheel-barrow, was in course of being hewn from a solid piece of wood, by very young carpenters, and various articles of furniture by older hands were in course of concoction.  “Johnnie and Cray carved this in the winter,” said the girls, “and when it is done it will be a settle, and stand in the arbour where papa smokes sometimes.”