Master Gammon responded with no remarkable flash of his eyes, and merely opened his mouth and shut it, as when a duck divides its bill, but fails to emit the customary quack.
"And to you, little pigs; and to you, Mulberry; and you, Dapple; and you, and you, and you." Rhoda nodded round to all the citizens of the farmyard; and so eased her heart of its laughing bubbles.

After which, she fell to a meditative walk of demurer joy, and had a regret.

It was simply that Dahlia's hurry in signing the letter, had robbed her of the delight of seeing "Dahlia Ayrton" written proudly out, with its wonderful signification of the change in her life.
That was a trifling matter; yet Rhoda felt the letter was not complete in the absence of the bridal name.

She fancied Dahlia to have meant, perhaps, that she was Dahlia to her as of old, and not a stranger.
"Dahlia ever; Dahlia nothing else for you," she heard her sister say.
But how delicious and mournful, how terrible and sweet with meaning would "Dahlia Ayrton," the new name in the dear handwriting, have looked! "And I have a brother-in-law," she thought, and her cheeks tingled.

The banks of fern and foxglove, and the green young oaks fringing the copse, grew rich in colour, as she reflected that this beloved unknown husband of her sister embraced her and her father as well; even the old bent beggarman on the sandy ridge, though he had a starved frame and carried pitiless faggots, stood illumined in a soft warmth.