“Turkeys!  You aren’t good, are you?  Come on!” And, stretching out her hands with the palms held up, she backed away from the tulip-bed.  The turkeys, trailing delicately their long-toed feet and uttering soft, liquid interrogations, moved after her in hopes of what she was not holding in her little brown hands.  The sun, down in the west, for it was past tea-time, slanted from over the roof of the red house, and painted up that small procession—­the deep blue frock of little Gyp, the glint of gold in the chestnut of her hair; the daisy-starred grass; the dark birds with translucent red dewlaps, and checkered tails and the tulip background, puce and red and yellow.  When she had lured them to the open gate, little Gyp raised herself, and said: 

“Aren’t you duffies, dears?  Shoo!” And on the tails of the turkeys she shut the gate.  Then she went to where, under the walnut-tree—­the one large tree of that walled garden—­a very old Scotch terrier was lying, and sitting down beside him, began stroking his white muzzle, saying: 

“Ossy, Ossy, do you love me?”

Presently, seeing her mother in the porch, she jumped up, and crying out:  “Ossy—­Ossy!  Walk!” rushed to Gyp and embraced her legs, while the old Scotch terrier slowly followed.

Thus held prisoner, Gyp watched the dog’s approach.  Nearly three years had changed her a little.  Her face was softer, and rather more grave, her form a little fuller, her hair, if anything, darker, and done differently—­instead of waving in wings and being coiled up behind, it was smoothly gathered round in a soft and lustrous helmet, by which fashion the shape of her head was better revealed.

“Darling, go and ask Pettance to put a fresh piece of sulphur in Ossy’s water-bowl, and to cut up his meat finer.  You can give Hotspur and Brownie two lumps of sugar each; and then we’ll go out.”  Going down on her knees in the porch, she parted the old dog’s hair, and examined his eczema, thinking:  “I must rub some more of that stuff in to-night.  Oh, ducky, you’re not smelling your best!  Yes; only—­not my face!”

A telegraph-boy was coming from the gate.  Gyp opened the missive with the faint tremor she always felt when Summerhay was not with her.

“Detained; shall be down by last train; need not come up to-morrow.—­Bryan.”

When the boy was gone, she stooped down and stroked the old dog’s head.

“Master home all day to-morrow, Ossy—­master home!”

A voice from the path said, “Beautiful evenin’, ma’am.”

The “old scoundrel,” Pettance, stiffer in the ankle-joints, with more lines in his gargoyle’s face, fewer stumps in his gargoyle’s mouth, more film over his dark, burning little eyes, was standing before her, and, behind him, little Gyp, one foot rather before the other, as Gyp had been wont to stand, waited gravely.

“Oh, Pettance, Mr. Summerhay will be at home all to-morrow, and we’ll go a long ride:  and when you exercise, will you call at the inn, in case I don’t go that way, and tell Major Winton I expect him to dinner to-night?”