ed to come back again, and no wonder, when
everything was there that could minister to their amusement. It was
quite different for her, living at home all the year round. She was
quite sick of it. Why was not her father like other men of his wealth
and lineage, who had their country houses and their country sports, but
did not spend the whole year over them? Daughters of men of far less
established position than the Squire went to London, went abroad,
visited constantly at other country houses, and saw many guests in their
own houses. Her own brothers did all these things, except the last. They
seldom brought their friends to Kencote, she supposed because it was not
like other big country houses, at any rate not like the houses at which
they stayed. It was old-fashioned, not amusing enough; shooting parties
were nearly always made up from amongst neighbours, and if any one
stayed in the house to shoot, or for the few winter balls, it was nearly
always a relation, or at best a party of relations. And the very few
visits Cicely had ever paid had been to the houses of relations, some of
them amusing, others not at all so.

She was now rather ashamed of her diatribe to Muriel Graham about her
London visit. She must have given Muriel the impression that what she
hungered for was smart society. She remembered that she had compared the
ball at the house of her aunt, Mrs. Birket, unfavourably with those at
other houses at which she had danced, and blushed and fidgeted with her
fingers when she thought of this. She liked staying with Mrs. Birket
better than with any other of her relations, and she was still sore at
her father's refusal to allow her to spend some months with her. She met
clever, interesting people there, she was always made much of, and she
admired and envied her cousins. They had travelled, they heard music,
saw plays and pictures, read books; and they could talk upon all these
subjects, as well as upon politics and upon what was going on in the big
world that really mattered--not superficially, but as if they were the
things that interested them most, as she knew they were. It was that
kind of life she really longed for; she had only got her thoughts a
little muddled in London because she had been rather humiliated in
feeling herself a stranger where her brothers were so much at home. When
she saw Muriel again she must put herself right there. Muriel would
understand her. Muriel had cut herself adrift from the w