For Tiffany the passing days were brimming like magic cups for ever full of wonder. There was a sweet troubling beauty in the world, a mysterious consciousness of glories yet unwon. Because there was really so little of Dick Sackville to remember except laughing eyes and kisses, Tiffany clothed him in all the rich robes of her fancy, as unlearned girls have clothed their puppets ever since the world began. All wit, all wisdom spoke by others might so easily have been begotten by Dick, thought Tiffany, eagerly building her gilded pagoda higher, hanging it about with merry little bells.

“Colonizing,” said Jermyn, sitting in the chintz parlour with new-brought tales from the war, “seems to give the generation born to it such a different quality. The young Volunteers have a different quality from any Englishman; flouting tradition, looking forward instead of back.”

Dick could have said that, thought Tiffany, smiling over the blue shirt she was stitching. Bubbling with some private well of happiness. How does she do it in these unhappy days, wondered Jermyn, asking:

“Do you flout tradition, my nut-brown maid?”

“How can I? All my traditions are in the future,” said Tiffany, feeling how gloriously she would build them with Dick.

“There you are.” Jermyn turned for consolation to Sally. “No reverence for the past, these youngsters. I vow they understand their elders even less than ordinary children can do.”

And their elders understand them less, thought Sally, wistfully. And then Caroline (who always thought she page 312 understood everything) bustled in, filling the room with the odour of patchouli, with a sense of purple feathers and red cheeks. So difficult to remember that there was only one of Caroline pervading the air so, pulling Linda's rare and ill-spelt letters from a great purple reticule, reading them aloud.

Linda, who had three times made Caroline a grandmother, sounded very content. “I'm nearly the only lady on the Canterbury Plains and young station-owners bring me chocklits from Christchurch to make Andy jellus, but he only laughs and eats them,” wrote Linda. “Our Maori shearers are quite difrunt from your horrid fighting ones and bring their fat wives for picking-up, and baby Prudence has cut a tooth….”

“Like another world, it sounds so peaceful,” said Sally, sighing. Linda, said Caroline resentfully, was getting more than her share, and it was high time she invited some of her sisters down to the chocolates and young station-owners—only there was no means of transporting them.

“But I still try to believe in Providence,” Caroline said, composing with the aid of a wall-mirror the proper expression for a lady who trusted in Providence under such provocation. “When will the war be over, Jermyn?”

The war, said Jermyn, would never be over, since the general sent from Australia to take supreme command spent all his energies sapping up to pas which were empty when he reached them, and had now refused to take his men into the bush where they so continually got lost.

“Stalemate,” said Jermyn, shrugging. Life was producing so many stalemates now, though Sally had somehow rid herself of her haggardness and persisted in drawing a man's eyes.

“Tamihana,” cried Tiffany, always ready to say a good word for the Maoris, “is doing his utmost to keep the Waikato out of the war. He is the greatest help England page 313 has. Why does Parliament say such dreadful things about his king-movement?”

“Why does it persist in sitting all the time, which is the most dangerous thing it could do,” returned Jermyn, who had just offended Peregrine by writing in the Chronicle: “The amount of ability in our Parliament is truly remarkable, and the way it is used more remarkable still.”

“You should let us youngsters talk to them, we understand the Maori,” said Tiffany saucily. And it might come to that before they were through, thought Jermyn, going discomfortably away.

Yet, with the help of Bishop Selwyn and Judge Martin, Tamihana did contrive to arrange a truce in spite of Parliament; so, after a year of war, the Maoris went off to dry fish and fill the storehouses in preparation for another one, and the country sat back to lick its wounds and consider an amount of destruction which would put settlement back several decades.

“All the young bucks will be home to marry you now, Tiffy,” said Jermyn, going up to Lovel Hall, where joy had everyone by the hair, and Tiffany was running about, her very crinoline riotous with excitement, and Sally airing the best linen sheets for the boys whom she would really see again.

“No, no,” cried Tiffany, going scarlet to the ears. Then she laughed, her fluttering hands making benedictions. “Herewith I solemnly bestow them upon Sophia and Maria,” she said, running away.

“M'm,” said Jermyn. “A woman's reticences are so much more stimulating than her confidences, but I'd like to know the name of Tiffy's special young buck, Sally. I hope he's a worthy gentleman?”

“I don't know.” Sally was distressed. “I fear it isn't Hew, but Mr Lovel….”

“… Forgets that Tiffy is both a Lovel and a colonial,” page 314 said Jermyn. Likely to be wigs on the green when that special young buck returned.

Tucking up the yards and yards of her sprigged cambric, Tiffany slid down into the fern-gully, where the Maori god was long overgrown with weeds, and the ferntrees stood so high that sunlight fell but rarely on the brown creek and the maidenhair. But flax and fern still kept their austere sweetness. The kind of scent angels might use, thought Tiffany, washing her hands in the pure water, washing the world off (although knowing it wouldn't stay off) before she raised them to pray for Dick to all the listening gods.

So soon now Dick would be back to take away for ever the little persisting feeling that she had done wrong. With anyone else it would have been wrong, but not with him, thought Tiffany, her mind swinging in great circles, heavenly spirals taking her and her paladin higher, higher to the skies….

God, it seemed, proposed, for there was chance of a permanent peace now; but Governor Gore Browne, his fat neck redder than ever, disposed. Possibly he felt that now the Prince Consort was dead it was improper for the Queen to have an unattached king within her boundaries. Possibly he felt just exactly what he said: “The Queen's authority must be upheld at any price.” So he stoutly went to work issuing proclamations against Tamihana and his king; demanding unconditional submission and the payment of land and moneys, and would undoubtedly have added (if he had thought of it) the sending of a dozen shirted chiefs with halters round their necks, like the citizens of Calais.

Parliament, staggering under the effects of one war which had crippled the infant colony for a generation, shrieked aloud to any who would hear, and Peregrine endeavoured to cling to his dignity among members who were losing theirs all the time and talking about stringing Gore Browne to lamp-posts … only there were none.

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Caroline did her best for everybody by standing up in her bath if the girls happened to play “God save the Queen,” and Sophia did her best for herself by jettisoning the Vestal Virgins (who remained too virgin altogether) and petitioning returning officers for curios.

“Maori axes, anything you like to give me,” said Sophia to gentlemen unable to conceal their dislike to giving her anything. Poor Sophia, making her collections in the belief that everything ugly (including herself) must be interesting.

England began a tentative shuffle with regiments. Some, it seemed, would still be necessary, but those of long service would be exchanged. Tiffany's heart felt so terribly unstable. To go anywhere with Dick would be heaven; but to leave her own New Zealand, to leave mamma and darling Roddy—“The soul would have no rainbows had the eyes no tears,” she thought; smiling because she had written that once to Dick, smiling about the house and presently encountering a portentous papa, looking as though he had a hand-grenade up his black coat-sleeve. Papa requested Tiffany to come into the study, where she was glad to sit in one of the great leather chairs, since her legs seemed suddenly weak. Dick? But papa didn't know about Dick….

Peregrine looked with approval on this slim thing thing sitting so quietly with her widespread skirts of flowered muslin, her pretty hands obedient in her lap, her pretty russet ringlets rolled away into the newfangled net which gave such charming sleekness to a young woman's head and neck.

“My dear,” he said, “you look very well. I fancy Hew—” So it was Hew, whom Tiffany had quite forgotten. It was so much Hew that he was coming to see her this evening to add her consent to that already given by papa. Hew, it seemed, was an excellent young man with a first-class knowledge of farming and other like attributes to endear him to any girl. The war, unfortun- page 316 ately, had interfered with plans during the past year, but there was no reason for further delay. A speedy marriage and then Canterbury where, it appeared, Hew was much needed. “He was somewhat diffident, as is becoming in a suitor, but I assured him that you could have no reason for objection.”

“I do object,” said Tiffany, as well as she could for the throbbing in her throat. Peregrine was prepared for this. Indeed, any other answer would have been immodest.

“That is quite natural, my dear. It will pass.”

“It won't,” said Tiffany, coming out louder than she expected.

Peregrine stiffened. Good Heavens, was a man of many troubles always to have contention in his own household?

“May I ask your reasons?”

“I—I don't love him.”

“Tut! A girl's answer. A child's answer. Love will come.”

Tiffany was losing her temper in her fear. She would not see Hew, who might guess too much.

“It has come. But not for Hew.”

“By Heavens! You dare to tell me that you have loved without my permission.” His daughter's eyes began to twinkle with laughter and he hastily controlled himself. This minx should not get the better of him again. “All young ladies are always in love with some young gentleman and such sentimentality becomes them. Marriage, my dear, is based upon sounder qualities, and Hew—”

“I agree that one would not become sentimental over Hew,” said Tiffany, standing up. “And I think it's very likely that he is a good farmer since he has so little else to recommend him. When I said I loved someone else I meant it, papa, and he will soon come back to tell you about it.”

“You dare—” But daring had never got him anywhere page 317 with Tiffany. “I desire to know his name,” said Peregrine, trying to keep his head.

“He will tell you when he comes.” Never never would she tell it. So much she had promised Dick, who had pleaded for the pride of doing the telling himself.

“Do you defy me, Tiffany?” (This, thought Peregrine uneasily, had a familiar sound. Roddy, Tiffany; so often, so incredibly had they defied him, and he couldn't put either over his knee now.)

“Yes, papa,” said Tiffany sweetly.

“Then go to your room.” This also was familiar. But she always had to come out of it sometime. What man would have children, thought Peregrine, pacing up and down, wondering what he should say to Hew, even unbosoming himself to Jermyn coming in. Jermyn stared.

“Where are your eyes, man? Everyone else has seen that she's head over ears in love. That's what has given her such uncommon beauty lately, for she's not really handsome,” said Jermyn.

“Pray do not talk like a lovesick fool. I shall thrash this indecent nonsense out of her.”

“The dullness of parents always amazes me,” said Jermyn, flinging his cloak over a chair and admiring the new crimson lining. “Can you tell me why a stubborn father should not expect to find that stubbornness transmitted to his children?”

“I am in no mood for riddles,” said Peregrine, marching out. All his life he had tried to do everything for the best, but, it seemed, nobody ever supported him.