reach Sales Hall and enjoy the party, or drive on for ever in this
delightful company, but the carriage turned up the avenue of elms and
Rose saw for the first time the house which Francis Sales now offered
as an attraction. It was a big, square house with honest, square
windows, and the drive, shadowed by the elms, ran through the fields
where the haymaking was in progress. Only immediately in front of the
house were there any flower-beds and there were no garden trees or
shrubs. The effect was of great freedom and spaciousness, of
unaffected homeliness; and even then the odd delightful mixture of
hall and farm, the grandeur of the elm avenue set in the simplicity of
fields, gave pleasure to Rose Mallett's beauty-loving eyes. Anything
might happen in a garden that suddenly became a field, in a field that
ended in a garden, and the house had the same capacity for surprise.

There was a matted hall sunk a foot below the threshold, and to Rose,
accustomed to the delicate order of Nelson Lodge with its slim,
shining, old furniture, its polished brass and gleaming silver, the
comfortable carelessness of this place, with a man's cap on the hall
table, a group of sticks and a pair of slippers in a corner, and an
opened newspaper on a chair, seemed the very home of freedom. It was a
masculine house in which Mrs. Sales, a gentle lady with a fichu of
lace round her soft neck, looked strangely out of place, yet entirely
happy in her strangeness.

On the day of the party Rose had only a glimpse of the interior. The
three Miss Malletts, Caroline sweeping majestically ahead, were led
into the hayfield where Mrs. Sales sat serenely in a wicker chair. It
was evident at once that Mr. Sales, bluff and hearty, with gaitered
legs, was fond of little girls. He realized that this one with the
black hair and the solemn grey eyes would prefer eating strawberries