"When they come back," I say, slowly, "I will go away to Alice or Jack. . . . I will never meet Paul again of my own free will. George! George! how shall I ever get through my life without a sight of him now and then?"
He does not answer, for what can he say? Real comfort he has none to give me, false he will not offer, so he says nothing.
"I am afraid you will be very lonely in August, Nell," he says, presently; "everybody seems to be going away but you."
"I do not mind. It seems so odd papa's going to Scotland with you; he has not been anywhere since he came back from New Zealand."
"No. Dolly and your mother are going to the Lovelaces', are they not?"
"Yes; and I am to keep house here. What a muddle it will be! I wish Jack were coming home for August, not September."
"Ah! you'll not speak to me when he is here."
"Wait and see."
"They're not dead," says Basan's voice, sounding immediately over our bodies, "for I heard one of them speak."
"We forgot all about you!" says Dolly's fresh voice, with some dismay in it, as she, too, leans over our mounds. "The fact is, we have been eating strawberries, and it does pass the time so quickly."
And, alas! when we are disinterred, and sit up on end, thirsty, scratched, blinking, dishevelled, with our heads stuck as full of wisps of hay as a pin-cushion is full of pins, we find that Dolly and Basan have, with a greediness that has no parallel in these modern times, very literally confined their attention to eating them, for they have not brought one berry with which to cool our parched, and dry, and dusty throats.
