“Bella!”

“Yes, Master Jon.”

“Do let’s have tea under the oak tree when they come; I know they’d like it best.”

“You mean you’d like it best.”

Little Jon considered.

“No, they would, to please me.”

Bella smiled. “Very well, I’ll take it out if you’ll stay quiet here and not get into mischief before they come.”

Little Jon sat down on the bottom step, and nodded. Bella came close, and looked him over.

“Get up!” she said.

Little Jon got up. She scrutinized him behind; he was not green, and his knees seemed clean.

“All right!” she said. “My! Aren’t you brown? Give me a kiss!”

And little Jon received a peck on his hair.

“What jam?” he asked. “I’m so tired of waiting.”

“Gooseberry and strawberry.”

Num! They were his favourites!

When she was gone he sat still for quite a minute. It was quiet in the big hall open to its East end so that he could seeone of his trees, a brig sailing very slowly across the upper lawn. In the outer hall shadows were slanting from thepillars. Little Jon got up, jumped one of them, and walked round the clump of iris plants which filled the pool ofgrey-white marble in the centre. The flowers were pretty, but only smelled a very little. He stood in the open doorway andlooked out. Suppose!— suppose they didn’t come! He had waited so long that he felt he could not bear that, and his attentionslid at once from such finality to the dust motes in the bluish sunlight coming in: Thrusting his hand up, he tried to catchsome. Bella ought to have dusted that piece of air! But perhaps they weren’t dust — only what sunlight was made of, and helooked to see whether the sunlight out of doors was the same. It was not. He had said he would stay quiet in the hall, buthe simply couldn’t any more; and crossing the gravel of the drive he lay down on the grass beyond. Pulling six daisies he