“And since he has lived at the Lawn, they have all quite set up for county people or anything you please,” said Jenny, a little bitterly.  “Mrs. Moy drives about with the most stylish pair of ponies; and as to Miss Gussie, she is making herself into a proverb!  I can’t bear them.”

“Well done, Jenny!” exclaimed Julius.

“Perhaps it is wrong,” said Jenny, in a low voice.  “I dare say I am not just.  You know I always did think Mr. Moy could have cleared Archie if he would,” she added, with a slightly trembling tone.

“So did I,” said Raymond.  “I gave him the opportunity after George Proudfoot’s death; but when the choice lay between two memories, one could hardly wonder if he preferred to shield his brother-in-law.”

“Or himself!” said Jenny, under her breath.

“Come, Jenny,” said Julius, feeling that the moment for interruption had come, “it is time we should be off.  Methinks there are sounds as if the whole canine establishment at Mrs. Hornblower’s were prancing up to meet us.”

So it proved; and Jenny had to run the gauntlet through the ecstasies of all the dogs, whose ecclesiastical propriety was quite overthrown, for they danced about her to the very threshold of the church, and had to have the door shut on their very noses.  That drop of bitterness, which her sad brief story could not fail to have left in poor Joanna’s heart, either passed out of mind in what followed, or was turned into the prayer, “And to turn their hearts;” and she was her bright self again for her promised assistance at the school.

Then Herbert’s address was, “Come, Joan, I promised to take you to see the Reeves’s pheasant at the Outwood Lodge.  Such a jolly old woman!”

“The pheasant?”

“No; the keeper’s mother.  Tail a yard long!  I don’t see why we shouldn’t turn them out at home.  If father won’t take it up, I shall write to Phil.”

“Thank you, Herbs.  Hadn’t you better secure a little reading first?  I could wait; I’ve got to write to Will.”

“The post doesn’t go till five.”

“But I want to get it done.  The mail goes to-morrow.”

“You’ll do it much better after a walk.  I can’t understand anything after the fumes of the school, unless I do a bit of visiting first; and that pheasant is a real stunner.  It really is parish work, Jenny.  Look here, this is what I’m reading her.”

“Learn to die!” said Jenny, laughing heartily.  “Nothing could be more appropriate, only you should have begun before October.”

“You choose to make fun of everything!” answered Herbert, gruffly; and Jenny, deciding that she would see a specimen day, made her peace by consenting to share in the pastoral visit, whether to pheasant or peasant.  Indeed, a walk with Herbert was one of the prime pleasures of her life—­and this was delightful, along broad gravelled drives through the autumnal woods with tinted beech-leaves