town along with us.
But I suppose you get across to this station and go by rail?'

'I am obliged to go that way for my portmanteau,' said Christopher, 'or I
should have been pleased to walk further. Shall I see you in Sandbourne
to-morrow? I hope so.'

'Well, no. 'Tis hardly likely that you will see us--hardly. We know how
unpleasant it is for a high sort of man to have rough chaps like us
hailing him, so we think it best not to meet you--thank you all the same.
So if you should run up against us in the street, we should be just as
well pleased by your taking no notice, if you wouldn't mind. 'Twill save
so much awkwardness--being in our working clothes. 'Tis always the plan
that Mrs. Petherwin and we agree to act upon, and we find it best for
both. I hope you take our meaning right, and as no offence, Mr. Julian.'

'And do you do the same with Picotee?'

'O Lord, no--'tisn't a bit of use to try. That's the worst of
Picotee--there's no getting rid of her. The more in the rough we be the
more she'll stick to us; and if we say she shan't come, she'll bide and
fret about it till we be forced to let her.'

Christopher laughed, and promised, on condition that they would retract
the statement about their not being proud; and then he wished his friends
good-night.

15. AN INNER ROOM AT THE LODGE

At the Lodge at this time a discussion of some importance was in
progress. The scene was Mrs. Chickerel's bedroom, to which,
unfortunately, she was confined by some spinal complaint; and here she
now appeared as an interesting woman of five-and-forty, properly dressed
as far as visible, and propped up in a bed covered with a quilt which
presented a field of little squares in many tints, looking altogether
like a bird's-eye view of a market garden.

Mrs. Chickerel had been nurse in a nobleman's family until her marriage,
and after that she played the part of wife and mother, upon the whole,
affectionately and well. Among her minor differences with her husband
had been one about the naming of the children; a matter that was at last
compromised by an agreement under which the choice of the girls' names
became her prerogative, and that of the boys' her husband's, who limited
his field of selection to strict historical precedent as a set-off to
Mrs. Chickerel's tendency to stray into the regions of romance.

The only grown-up daughters at home, Ethelberta and Picotee, with their
brother Joey, were sitting near