So Freddy knew!

"Has Meg told you?" His voice was anxious.

"Told me? Do you suppose I'm blind?" Freddy spoke with such frank
sympathy and pleasure that from his voice more than his words Michael
took heart.

"It's awful cheek on my part."

"Yes, 'awful cheek,'" Freddy said. "Considering Meg's just the one and
only Meg in the world." He took Meg's brown hand in his--such a
different hand from Millicent's!--and placed it on the top of Michael's
and held it there. "Bless you, my children!" he said. "I feel like a
heavy father. And I've nothing more to say, except that I'm jolly
glad, and I congratulate you both."

Meg's eyes were shining. Freddy was so boyish and yet so much her
elder brother. How she loved him!

"Thanks, old chap," Michael said. "I suppose Meg's told you all about
it?--I mean, how I'm not going to let her bind herself to me? We love
each other, and I forgot and told her I did."

Freddy laughed. "If something better than you, you old drifter, turns
up, she's to be free to take him. Of course, something will!"

"Yes," Michael said. "Or if . . ." he paused.

"If you prove too unpractical for a husband, you old humbug, I'm to
cancel the engagement!"

Meg linked her arm in her brother's. "I'm quite practical, enough for
us both," she said. "The Lampton common sense wants leavening. We
never rise to heights, Freddy--we're solid dough."

"We manage to get down into the bowels of the earth, which helps a bit,
if we can't soar very high."

All three laughed. Freddy meant the tomb, of course.

Freddy was smoking a cigarette. His eyes were following the two
donkeys which were taking Millicent and her friend down the valley.
They looked like white insects in the distance; they had travelled
rapidly, as donkeys will travel on their homeward journey.

"The fair Millicent!--and, by Jove, she is fair!"--Freddy said,
meditatively, "didn't come here to find out your engagement--don't
imagine so. She managed to carry away some information more difficult
to obtain than that." He laughed and quoted the old saying, "Love,
like light, cannot be hid. What a pity she isn't all as nice as the
nice parts of her, or as nice as she is pretty!"

"I always think she looks so nice to eat," Margaret said.

"I think she looks so nice to kiss," Freddy said laughingly. "If that
American hadn't been there, I'd have taken her off for a walk, and then
I could have told you, Mike, what it was like.