ve talked enough about yourselves. Where
does she live, and what is she like, and what does she do, and what will
_you_ do when you're there? Have any of you ever seen the place?"

"Not since we were old enough to remember, but mother has been and told
us all about it. It's big, with a lodge, two lodges, and a park all
round, very rich, and grand, and respectable, and dull. There are men-
servants to wait at table, and the windows are never open, and she
drives out every day in a closed carriage, and plays patience at night,
and wears two wigs, turn about, a week at a time. Her cheeks are red,
the sort of red that is made up of little red lines, and never gets
brighter or darker, and she likes to be quiet and avoid excitement. Oh,
imagine what it would be like to _choose_ to be quiet, and deliberately
run away from a fuss! Can you imagine if you lived a thousand years
ever reaching such a pitch as that?"

Darsie held out both hands in dramatic appeal, and her hearers groaned
with unction. It was impossible, absolutely beyond the power of
imagination to picture such a plight. Each girl hugged to herself the
conviction that with her at least would remain immortal youth; that
happen what might to the rest of mankind, no length of years could numb
her own splendid vitality and _joie de vivre_.

Not even, and at the thought the three Garnetts sighed in concert, not
even Aunt Maria!

CHAPTER FOUR.

A DOUBLE PICNIC.

Only four days before Aunt Maria arrived to make her great decision!
The Garnetts were living in what Darsie graphically described as "the
hush before the storm," adored, condoned, and indulged by parents who
saw before them the pangs of separation, and by brothers shrewdly
expectant of parting spoils.

Clemence, Darsie, and Lavender were acutely conscious of the rarified
atmosphere by which they were surrounded, and only regretted its
necessarily limited duration.

"Let's take advantage of it!" cried Darsie, the diplomat. "It's our
chance; we should be noodles if we let it slip. Anything we ask now
they'll let us have. It's like prisoners who can order what they like
for supper the night before they're hanged. Let's think what we'd like,
and go in a body and petition mother. She won't have the heart to
refuse!"

The sisters agreed enthusiastically, but were not rich in suggestions.
It is one of the curious things in life that whereas every day one is
brought up sharply against a doze