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In less than a minute they had met.

“I heard where you had gone and came to meet you,” he said awkwardly. “How well you are looking, Barbara, how well and—-” he had meant to add “beautiful,” but his tongue stumbled at the word and what he said was “brown.”

“If I were an Indian I suppose I should thank you for the compliment, Anthony, but as it is I don’t know. But how well you are looking, how well and by comparison–fat.”

Then they both laughed, and he explained at length how he had been able to get home two days earlier than he expected; also that he had taken his degree with even higher honours than he hoped.

“I am so glad,” she said earnestly.

“And so am I; I mean glad that you are glad. You see, if it hadn’t been for you I should never have done so well. But because I thought you would be glad, I worked like anything.”

“You should have thought of what your father would feel, not of–of–well, it has all ended as it should, so we needn’t argue. How is your brother George?” she went on, cutting short the answer that was rising to his lips. “I suppose I should call him Captain Arnott now, for I hear he has been promoted. We haven’t seen him since he came home last week, from some hospital in the South of England, they say.”

Anthony’s face grew serious.

“I don’t know; I don’t quite like the look of him, and he coughs such a lot. It seems as though he could not shake off that chill he got in the trenches. That’s why he hasn’t been to call at the Rectory.”

“I hope this beautiful weather will cure him,” Barbara replied rather doubtfully, for she had heard a bad report of George Arnott’s health. Then to change the subject she added, “Do you know, we had a visitor yesterday, Aunt Maria in the flesh, in a great deal of flesh, as Janey says.”

“Do you mean Lady Thompson?”

She nodded.

“Aunt Thompson and her footman and her pug dog. Thank goodness, she only stayed to tea, as she had a ten mile drive back to her hotel. As it was, lots of things happened.”

“What happened?”

“Well, first when she got out of the carriage, covered with jet anchor chains–for you know Uncle Samuel died only three months ago and left her all his money–she caught sight of our heads staring at her out of the drawing-room window, and asked father if he kept a girls’ school. Then she made mother cry by remarking that she ought to be thankful to Providence for having taken to its bosom the four of us who died young –you know she has no children herself and so can’t feel about them. Also father was furious because she told him that at least half of us should have been boys. He turned quite pink and said:

“‘I have been taught, Lady Thompson, that these are matters which God Almighty keeps in His own hands, and to Him I must refer you.’

“‘Good gracious! don’t get angry,’ she answered. ‘If you clergymen can cross-examine your Maker, I am not in that position. Besides, they are all very good-looking girls who may find husbands, if they ever see a man. So things might have been worse.’

“Then she made remarks about the tea, for Uncle Samuel was a tea-merchant; and lastly that wicked Janey sent the footman to take the pug dog to walk past the butcher’s shop where the fighting terrier lives. You can guess the rest.”

“Was the pug killed?” asked Anthony.

“No, though the poor thing came back in a bad way. I never knew before that a pug’s tail was so long when it is quite uncurled. But the footman looked almost worse, for he got notice on the spot. You see he went into the ‘Red Dragon’ and left the pug outside.”