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Honorable John was pouring out tea; and here, once and for all, let it be known that meals, particularly five o'clock tea, will occupy a large place in this chronicle, not because of any importance especially attaching to them, but because in the country, at least in Slumberleigh, the day is not divided by hours but by the meals that take place therein, and to write of Slumberleigh and its inhabitants with disregard to their divisions of time is "impossible, and cannot be done."
"I have cared for none of these things till till I came to hear them spoken of at Slumberleigh by you and and now at first it is smooth, because I say I will do what I can, but soon they will find out I cannot do much, and then " He shrugged his shoulders. They drove on in silence.
It seemed ages ago since April, when the village was a foaming mass of damson blossom, and the "plum winter" had set in just when spring really seemed to have arrived for good. It was a well-known thing in Slumberleigh, though Ruth till last April had not been aware of it, that God Almighty always sent cold weather when the Slumberleigh damsons were in bloom, to harden the fruit.
Their grave eyes met, and each thought how ill the other looked. "I did not know I thought you were going to Slumberleigh to-day," said Ruth. "I go to-morrow morning," replied Charles. "I came here first."
Alwynn had found useful on a similar occasion, was enjoined upon him. As they stood together on the church steps a fly, heavily laden with luggage, came slowly up the road towards them. "What," said Mr. Alwynn, "more visitors! I thought all the Slumberleigh party arrived yesterday."
She was glad to be out of the way of meeting any one, especially the shooters, whose guns she had heard in the nearer Slumberleigh coverts several times that afternoon. The Arleigh woods she knew were to be kept till later in the month.
The 18th of October had arrived. Slumberleigh Hall was filling. The pheasants, reprieved till then, supposed it was only for partridge shooting, and thinking no evil, ate Indian-corn, and took no thought for the annual St. Bartholomew of their race.
Alwynn was not accustomed. And this was Henry Dare's second son, the son by his French wife, who had been brought up abroad, of whom no one had ever heard or cared to hear, who had now succeeded, by his half-brother's sudden death, to Vandon, a property adjoining Slumberleigh. The eager foreign face was becoming familiar to Mr. Alwynn. Dare was like his mother; but he sat exactly as Mr.
"It must be a great change, after living with a woman like Lady Deyncourt to whose house I often went years ago, when her son was living to come to a place like Slumberleigh." "It is a great change. I am ashamed to say how much I felt it at first. I don't know how to express it; but everything down here seems so small and local, and hard and fast."
His keeper had just received private notice from the Thursbys' keeper that a raid on the part of a large gang of poachers was expected that night in the parts of the Slumberleigh coverts that had not yet been shot over, and which adjoined Ralph's own land. "Whereabout will that be?" said Charles, inattentively, drawing his magnet slowly in front of the fleet.
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