The idyllic summer days passed quickly by, and every time that my lord spoke of leaving, the outcry was so indignant and so firm that he hastily subsided and told himself he would stay just another few days. His shoulder, having mended up to a certain point, refused quite to heal, and exertion brought the pain back very swiftly. So his time was for the most part spent with Mistress Di out of doors, helping her with her gardening and her chickens—for Diana was an enthusiastic poultry farmer on a small scale—and ministering to her various pets. If Fido had a splinter in his paw, it was to Mr. Carr that he was taken; if Nellie, the spaniel, caught a live rabbit, Mr. Carr would assuredly know what to do for it, and the same with all the other animals. The young pair grew closer and closer together, while Miss Betty and O’Hara watched from afar, the former filled with pride of her darling, and satisfaction, and the latter with apprehension. O’Hara knew that his friend was falling unconsciously in love, and he feared the time when John should realise it. He confided these fears to his wife, who, with young David, was staying at her mother’s house in Kensington, in a long and very Irish letter. She replied that he must try and coax my lord into coming to stay with them, when her charms would at once eclipse Mistress Diana’s, though to be sure, she could not understand why Miles should not wish him to fall in love, for as he well knew, ’twas a prodigious pleasant sensation. If he did not know it, then he was indeed most disagreeable. And had he ever heard of anything so wonderful?—David had
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