have rest. I believe--but am not sure--that somebody got up very
early this morning to make that pie. I told them I had left
some friends in distress; and Primrose and I--did what we
could. I realized this morning what must be the position of a
Commissary General on a rapid march.'

The provision on the board called for no excuses. Rollo served
everybody, even Mrs. Saddler, and afterwards dispensed
strawberries of much larger growth than those of the day
before. He was the impersonation of gay activity as long as
there was anything to do; and then he subsided into ease-
taking. The smoke of a cigar did not indeed offend Miss
Kennedy's mill-door; but in a luxurious position under a tree
at some distance the sometime smoker settled himself with his
sketch-book, and seemed to be comfortably busy at play, till
it was time for moving.

Wych Hazel had been in an altogether quiet mood since the
arrival of the rockaway. In that mood she had watched the
unpacking of the basket, in that mood she had eaten her
dinner. It was strange, even to herself, the sort of quietus
Mr. Rollo was to her. Not feeling free to play with him, by no
means disposed to play before him, she had ventured to offer
her services no further than by asking him what he wanted;
then left him to himself; oddly conscious all the while, that
if it had been any other one of her new feline friends, she
would have put her little hand into the business and the
basket with pleasant effect. So she sat still and watched
him,--giving a bit of a smile now and then indeed to his direct
remarks, but as often only a fuller look of the brown eyes.