ine fresh
ruffles and unexpected equipage of greenery, with a strange epaulet
upon that shoulder and a brand-new periwig upon that brow, that if high
hills but hopped outside the Psalter you would have sworn the snowy
Pyrenees had found new equerries.

Luncheon was served indoors.

Throughout the winter the lawn before the Club-house had made a
dining-room. To-day, however, we were glad of the shade.

"Does Piers know," said Adele, "that he's coming home with us?"

Jill shook her head.

"Not yet. I meant to tell him in my last letter, but I forgot." She
turned to Daphne. "You don't think we could be married at once? I'm
sure Piers wouldn't mind, and I'd be so much easier. He does want
looking after, you know. Fancy his wanting to leave off that belt
thing."

"Yes, just fancy," said Berry. "Apart from the fact that it was a
present from you, it'd be indecent."

"It isn't that," said Jill. "But he might get an awful chill."

"I know," said Berry. "I know. That's my second point. Keep the
abdominal wall quarter of an inch deep in lamb's wool, and in the
hottest weather you'll never feel cold. Never mind. If he mentions it
again, we'll make its retention a term of the marriage settlement."

Jill eyed him severely before proceeding.

"It could be quite quiet," she continued; "the wedding, I mean. At a
registry place----"

"Mrs. Hunt's, for instance," said Berry.

"--and then we could all go down to White Ladies together, and when he
has to go back to fix things up in Italy, I could go, too."

"My darling," said Daphne, "don't you want to be married from home? In
our own old church at Bilberry? For only one thing, if you weren't, I
don't think the village would ever get over it."

Jill sighed.

"When you talk like that," she said, "I don't want to be married at
all.... Yes, I do. I want Piers. I wouldn't be happy without him.
But... If only he hadn't got four estates of his own, we might----"

"Five," said Berry. Jill opened her big grey eyes. "Four now, and a
share in another upon his wedding day."

Jill knitted her brow.

"I never knew this," she said. "What's the one he's going to have?"

Berry raised his eyebrows.

"It's a place in Hampshire," he said. "Not very far from Brooch. They
call it White Ladies."

The look which Jill gave us, as we acclaimed his words, came straight
out of Paradise.

"I do wish he could have heard you," she said uncertainly. "I'll tell
him