For Caroline life was on two planes—hers and the rest of the world's—and she rarely ceased her efforts to lift the world up to her. For weeks she tried earnestly to lift Sally up; sitting in the pretty chintz parlour with black ringlets bobbing out of her big bonnet and black eyes rounding while she spoke of Mr Flower's iniquities (which seemed to include swarms of wives) and the duty we owe to our sex, Sally dear.

“Yes,” said Sally, stitching blue muslin frills and not listening very much to Caroline—who at last had to take to prowling of evenings along the sweetbriar hedge dividing the sections in the hope of discovering something that would help poor Peregrine.

Tiffany, making her last good-nights to phlox and wallflower and poppy-buds, sometimes saw her with her cap gleaming like a toadstool and thought of ogresses, and found her dislike of all such unpleasant things crackling out into spiky derisive rhymes after she was in bed.

Already Tiffany had discovered that the mind's best protection against such invasions is to jest at them, though Roddy was always annoyed when she jested at papa. A woman's weapon, said Roddy, certain that it was wrong to say things behind people's backs. So she only said them to Roddy, who was just part of herself.

Caroline found prowling very difficult for a lady of her bulk. But reward came at last on a hot night when Peregrine went out, swinging his cane jauntily as though his house were not falling about his ears, and Leta Baizey called with her brother to take Darien to a Small and page 170 Early, and the children were in bed. Just the night for an assignation, thought Caroline, with even the garden so immoral in the languorous sweetness of its scents and its dim white bosses looking more like female bosoms than Mrs Simpkins pinks.

She wound her head in a black veil and her body in a long dark shawl, followed the little path to the wicket-gate, and let herself through into Sally's garden, which was breathing out such fragrance of heliotrope and roses that it was far more immoral than her own … to say nothing of the dim flitting of little moths everywhere. I am so sensitive, thought Caroline, crossing the lawns and pausing under the parlour window, which was shut of course, since night air is so dangerous and she was taking great risks herself.

Cramp caught her presently, standing there. But Sally must be snatched from the burning, though she wished the assignation would soon begin. It did begin. The opening of a door, a low laugh from Sally, a low answer in the unmistakable voice of a man. Only sin spoke so low. Indeed, after listening in vain for ages, after trying in vain to peer through the curtains, Caroline, quite wearied in well-doing, had to give it up and go home. But she had enough to feed on, feeling almost too full-fed when next morning she took the children to Lovel Hall for the opening of the Christmas box from England, and almost, though not quite, afraid to look at Sally, whose very face must be blazoning her wickedness.

But Sally, in crisp blue cambric with full white muslin under-sleeves and a little blue bow in her cap, was quite shameless; lifting out layers of straw and paper after Jermyn had wrenched away the bands of iron and prized open the lid; telling Roddy to bring Aunt Caroline a chair; laughing with Major Henry, so jovial in loose tussore with his tall hat over his ear; laughing with Jermyn sitting on the steps with the sun catching his dandy little whiskers.

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“Isn't it a huge box?” cried Sally. “So vastly good of Miss Clorinda.”

Everyone was waiting with shivers of excitement for Peregrine to begin. Magic events, the English boxes, to exiled English, to children especially whose only contact with England they were. They smelled different from anything else, thought Tiffany, glowing and sniffing. And they were different; particularly Lovel boxes, with old Aunt Clorinda alternately believing that her relatives were living in the laps of savages or of luxury and trying to provide for both contingencies.

Everything feels so Christmassy, thought Sally, grateful to Jermyn for being so kind last night helping her tie up Christmas presents and never frightening her at all. And he had spoken so beautifully about Zoroaster's belief in the coexisting principles of Good and Evil which enjoy using man as their battle-ground that (although she didn't understand very well) she felt Zoroaster must be helping him. And after Darien came back they had hung a piece of mistletoe in the veranda, Jermyn promising to kiss Caroline under it to-day…. Mr Lovel was beginning to unpack at last, though how he could have waited so long with all those eager eyes on him….

“Shoes for the little girls,” read Mr Lovel, slowly. “I hope they fit. My aunt is apt to forget that children grow. Put then down, Tiffany. You cannot try them on now.”

“Oh, Roddy! Look!” cried Tiffany, holding up the shining things while Sophia screamed: “Straps! I've always wanted straps!”

“Please do not quarrel, children. Put them aside. A parcel for you, Sally. Do not open it now or we shall never be done. Another roll of brown and red checked gingham for frocks,” said Peregrine, reading the legend like a Lesson in Church amid the vocal anguish of the little girls.

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“Oh, we had that check last time. Oh, I did want something pretty….”

“Children!” Conscious of how much of his valuable time was being wasted, Peregrine quelled the clamour with his eyeglass. “What is this? Lavender? Imagine taking up important space with….”

“Oh!” cried Sally and Darien, bending flushed faces over it. Childhood, dear England for ever gone in this enchanted lavender.

“A … dear me, I cannot read this,” said Peregrine, blinded by the eyeglass.

“Confound it, boy,” exploded Major Henry, “don't you know that an English box should be all uproarious mirth and muddle? Here … let me at it.”

“I fear stooping might be dangerous at your age, sir,” said Peregrine, shortly. Brian lifted sardonic brows at that plump little bunch of a Belinda whom Caroline was lacing so unmercifully in an effort to produce the waist unintended by nature. She giggled, and Jermyn made an attempt to mend matters by tying himself into a brown woollen petticoat and topping it with a fragile bonnet of white lace and flowers.

“I fancy these must be meant to go together,” he said, mincing down the veranda while the children relieved their tension with shrieks of joy.

“If you have no consideration for the ladies,” said Peregrine, really angry, “I think you might show some for my aunt, who could not have expected her gifts to be so ridiculed.”

“Oh, certainly,” said Jermyn, staring with sudden solemnity under the bonnet. Peregrine was digging his own grave in this exhibition. No living woman could possibly bear it.

“Red flannel—ah—undergarments,” read Peregrine, putting aside a bundle smelling strongly of camphor. “Soap. Pears scented….”

“That's mine.” Caroline grabbed. Even pity for Pere- page 173 grine couldn't keep her back longer. “Aunt knows I can't abide unscented. And that violet pelerine must be meant for me … oh, here's a coat for John.”

It was a dreadful moment. Tiffany, going red as a damask rose, scarcely dared hope Caroline would win. But now Darien was into it, intent on holding more than her own, diving her bright curls into the box.

“You don't want these fashion-books, Caroline. You're far too original. Nor this sage-green scarf….”

“It would suit Sophia,” cried Caroline, hanging on.

“Not it. Here's something with spots for her. Oh, what an exquisite lace—”

“Peregrine,” screamed Caroline, almost scuppered by superior agility. “Do you mean to let this saucy piece take everything?”

“I don't want everything,” said Darien, beginning to enjoy herself immensely and flinging out a rain of socks, waistcoats, and stuff petticoats. “You can have all those,” she announced, burrowing deeper.

Knowing how wicked it was to laugh so at Mr Lovel hovering helpless, Sally mopped her eyes, hoping that no one saw. But Jermyn's laughing eyes did—

“No dollies?” pleaded little Lucilla, tugging at Peregrine's coat-tails. “Sir, please, ain't there no dollies for me?”

“Bless your heart, we'll find you some dollies, my poppet,” said Major Henry, beginning to haul out the bowels of the box by armfuls, scattering balls, dolls, knives, games into eager little hands while Tiffany danced like a mænad, tangling bright skeins of wool in her hair.

Peregrine turned on his heel and walked off. The despoilers went mad with glee then, and Major Henry and Jermyn kissed everyone under the mistletoe. But Caroline, taking her children home at last, couldn't forgive Peregrine who had let Darien steal that length of gold tissue. I shan't tell him about Sally until I fell inclined, she thought.

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The day's merriment gave Jermyn a grim night. For all her struggles he must get Sally out of this soon. Peregrine was simply indecent. So he took his troubles out to the dark where a chill wind was blowing and grey clouds flying, and looked down a cliff to the beach below where a whaler's crew squatted round a thirty-gallon cask of rum, prepared to drink it dry before they rose. In the capricious light of a great driftwood fire the fellows looked like tattered giants, like gnomes, with here and there a god. They shouted chanties, beating time with the tin pannikins; laughed, quarrelled, wept maudlin tears, lay helpless with their drink upon the sand.

Second-hand devils they courted for their pleasure. And what was Jermyn's but a second-hand devil too? From the days of Solomon men had coveted their neighbours' wives and reaped the whirlwind of it. They had drunk themselves mad and sane again, and gone to virtuous living or back to the husks. And for all their wild hearts they had lain down in the grave in the end just like the dullest yokel who swallows his porridge and goes to sleep. Presently their skipper would round up these fellows below with a rope's end and clear for one of the little bays further down, where he would flog and bully and starve them back to their senses before they faced the black lonely seas about the Pole. What good would they have of their debauch then? What good did any man get of anything? Feeling unable to inquire beyond that, Jermyn gave it up and went home to bed.