a crumpled letter which she read while he was washing--a quite short
letter, which must have cost her father many a pang to write.


"MY DEAR,

"You and Val will not forget, I trust, that Jon knows nothing of family
history. His mother and I think he is too young at present. The boy is
very dear, and the apple of her eye. Verbum sapientibus,

"Your loving father,

"J. F."


That was all; but it renewed in Holly an uneasy regret that Fleur was
coming.

After tea she fulfilled that promise to herself and took Jon up the
hill. They had a long talk, sitting above an old chalk-pit grown over
with brambles and goosepenny. Milkwort and liverwort starred the green
slope, the larks sang, and thrushes in the brake, and now and then a
gull flighting inland would wheel very white against the paling sky,
where the vague moon was coming up. Delicious fragrance came to them, as
if little invisible creatures were running and treading scent out of the
blades of grass.

Jon, who had fallen silent, said rather suddenly:

"I say, this is wonderful! There's no fat on it at all. Gull's flight