t, and after these a tea party to
the churchwardens and their wives, to whom Godfrey was expected to
explain the wonders of the Alps. Before it was over, if he could have
managed it, these stolid farmers with their families would have lain at
the bottom of the deepest moraine that exists amid those famous
mountains. But there they were, swallowing tea and munching cake while
they gazed on him with ox-like eyes, and he plunged into wild
explanations as to the movements of glaciers.

"Something like one of them new-fangled machines what carry hay up on
to the top of stacks," said Churchwarden No. 1 at length.

"Did you ever sit on a glacier while it slided from the top to the
bottom of a mountain, Master Godfrey, and if so, however did you get up
again?" asked Churchwarden No. 2.

"Is a glacier so called after the tradesman what cuts glass, because
glass and ice are both clear-like?" inquired Churchwarden No. 1, filled
with sudden inspiration.

Then Godfrey, in despair, said that he thought it was and fled away,
only to be reproached afterwards by his father for having tried to
puzzle those excellent and pious men.

On Monday his luck was better, since Mr. Knight was called away
immediately after lunch to take a funeral in a distant parish of which
the incumbent was absent at the seaside. Godfrey, by a kind of
instinct, sped at once to the willow log by the stream, where, through
an outreaching of the long arm of coincidence, he found Isobel seated.
After casually remarking that the swallows were flying neither high nor
low that day, but as it were in mid-air, she added that she had not
seen him for a long while.

"No, you haven't--say for three years," he answered, and detailed his
tribulations.

"Ah!" said Isobel, "that's always the way; one is never left at leisure
to follow one's own fancies in this world. To-morrow, for instance, my
father and all his horrible friends--I don't know any of them, except
one, but from past experience I presume them to be horrible--are coming
down to lunch, and are going to stop for three days' partridge
shooting. Their female belongings are going to stop also, or some of
them are, which means that I shall have to look after them."

"It's all bad news to-day," remarked Godfrey, shaking his head. "I've
just had a telegram saying that I must report myself on Wednesday,
goodness knows why, for I expected to get a month's leave."

"Oh!" said Isobel, looking a little dismayed. "The