With their fine noses in the air, and their proud necks compassionately turned toward her, they are waiting, while she pushes, panting and shrieking, through the stout fern-stems; then, leap cruelly away in airy bounds.
"If I am not back by Christmas--" says Sir Roger, presently.
"By _Christmas_!" interrupt I, aghast, "one, two, three, four, _five_ months--but you _must_!--you MUST!" clasping both hands on his arm.
"I hope I shall, certainly," replies he; "but one never knows what may happen! If I am _not_--" "But you _must_," repeat I urgently, and apparently resolved that he shall never reach the end of his sentence; "if you are not--I warn you--you may not like it--I dare say you will not--but--I shall come to look for you!" "In a _sailing-vessel_, like the governor-general's wife ?" asks he with a smile.
* * * * * And now he is gone! gone in the first freshness of the morning! This year, I seem fated to witness the childhood of many summer days.

The carriage that bears him away is lost to sight--dwindled away to nothing among the park-trees.

Five minutes ago, my arms were clinging with a tightness of a clasp that a bear might have admired round his neck.

I was too choked with tears to say much, and kept repeating with the persistence of a guinea-fowl, but without the distinctness, "Come back! come back!" "Good-by, my Nancy!" he says, holding me a little from him, that he may the better consider my face, "be quite--_quite_ happy, while I am away--_indeed_, that will be the way to please me best, and be a little glad to see me when I come back!" And now he is gone; and I am left standing at the hall-door with level hand shading my eyes from the red sun--with a smeared face--with the butler and two footmen respectfully regarding my affliction--( _they_ do not like to disappear, till they have shut the door--_I_ do not like to ask them to retire, and I do not like to lose the last glimpse) so there I remain--nineteen--a grass widow, and--ALONE! I shall not, however, be alone for long; for this evening Barbara is coming.

Algy is to bring her, and to stay a few days on his way to Aldershott.