plainly worried to death, Egbert is
sulks personified, Queenie won't tell, Athelstane and Hereward either
don't know or don't care what's the matter, but it makes them cross.
What is one to do with such a family?" thought Ingred on Sunday
afternoon.

It had been wet, and, though a detachment of them had ventured to church
in waterproofs, they had not been able to take their usual safety valve
of a walk across the moors. Seven people in a small house seem to get in
one another's way on Sunday afternoons. Father was dozing in the
dining-room, Mother, Athelstane and Hereward were in the drawing-room,
interrupting each other's reading by constant extracts from their own
books; Ingred, who hated to pause in the midst of _The Scarlet
Pimpernel_ to hear choice bits from _The Young Visiters_ or _Parisian
Sketches_, sought sanctuary in her bedroom, only to find the blind drawn
and Quenrede with a bad headache, trying to rest. There seemed no
comfortable corner available, so she slipped on her thick coat, put her
book in the pocket, and walked down the garden to sit in the cycle-shed.
Even in the rain it was nice out of doors; clumps of purple and yellow
crocuses showed under the gooseberry bushes; lilies were pushing up
green heads through the soil; the flowering currant was bursting into
bud; roots of polyanthus flaunted mauve and orange blossoms; under a
sheltered wall were even a few early violets, whose sweet fresh scent
seemed as the first breath of spring. A missel-thrush on the bare pear
tree sang triumphantly through the rain, and a song-thrush, with more
melodious notes, trilled forth an occasional call; the robin, which had
haunted the garden all the winter, was scraping energetically for grubs
among the ivy on the wall, and scarcely troubled to fly away at her
approach.

Ingred drew great breaths of sweet-scented wet air, and, with almost the
same instinct as the thrush, broke into "Thank God for a Garden!" the
song that Mother loved to hear Quenrede sing in the evenings when the
day's work was over.

Delightful and refreshing and soothing as Nature may be, however, it is
rather a wet business to stand admiring crocuses in the streaming rain,
so Ingred made a dash through the dripping bushes to the cycle-shed. If
she had calculated upon finding solitude here she was disappointed. It
was occupied already. Egbert, looking as gloomy as Hamlet, was tinkering
with the motor-bicycle. He greeted his sister with something