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One of the many fallacies invented by learned people with a view to confusing the unlearned is the saying that “Nature never makes a mistake.”

Now no one on earth makes more mistakes than Dame Nature makes up aloft, or wherever else she may dwell. And I will tell you one of the greatest mistakes that she ever did make, and that was that she put a true mother’s heart inside the ample chest of Aunt Caroline and then wholly omitted — or forgot — to give her children of her own to love, to cosset, and to worry out of all patience.

Aunt Caroline as a mother would have been splendid. Her children’s faces would have been a bright red, and would have shone like apples that have been polished against the sleeve of a well-worn smock; their hair would have been smooth and glossy, their hands white and adorned with well-trimmed nails; they would have been learned in the art of making every kind of wine and preserve and pickle that mind of woman can conceive and stomach of man can digest, and totally ignorant of everything else in the world.

As an aunt, Aunt Caroline was a failure. For from the moment that her sister’s children were placed in her charge by their dying mother they did exactly as they liked at Old Manor Farm, and twiddled Aunt Caroline right round their thumbs.

To be sure Olive, the eldest, had snow-white hands with beautifully shaped nails to them; but she did not employ them in making cowslip wine and rhubarb preserve: she employed them chiefly for the decking up and the ornamentation of the rest of her lovely person, and one of them she employed now in the wearing of the golden ring which Sir Baldwin Jeffreys had placed on it some three or four years ago.

Olive, from the time that she left off playing with dolls — and that was very early in the history of her short life — had made up her mind that she would not wear out her youth and her beauty at the Old Manor Farm in the company of Uncle Jasper’s stuffed abominations: and since Aunt Caroline could not afford to take her up to London, where she might have made a suitable match, she looked about her in Thanet itself, in search of the most likely gentleman of wealth and position who would prove willing and eager to ask her to quit the lonely farmhouse, and to grace London society in his company and his own house as his mistress.

The most likely gentleman turned out to be Sir Baldwin Jeffreys, who had a large estate near Ashford and a fine house in town. He had come down to the neighbourhood of Minster-in-Thanet for some fishing with his friend, Mr. Culpepper, and Mr. Culpepper — to while away a fine Sunday afternoon — had driven him over to have tea with Mr. and Mrs. Hemingford at Old Manor Farm, and to see old Jasper Hemingford’s museum, which was the pride and talk of Thanet.

Sir Baldwin Jeffreys sat in the oak-rafted parlour of Old Manor Farm, and Miss Olive Aldmarshe handed him a cup of tea. Sir Baldwin Jeffreys was five-and-forty years old, but he looked thirty-five, and on that afternoon he felt twenty-two.

That was more than three years ago now, and in the meanwhile Lady Jeffreys had been the bright comet of two London seasons, and Old Manor Farm and its inhabitants had not seen her since the day when she walked out of it, a radiant and beautiful bride, on the arm of her middle-aged husband, and entered the smart coach, with its white and scarlet liveries and heavy Flemish horses, which were to convey her to her new home.

And now she had arrived quite unexpectedly on this very morning, and at the moment when Aunt Caroline was about to carve Cousin Barnaby’s third helping of lamb. There had come the noise of a distant coach rattling down the hill, the clatter of horses, the jingling of harness, the shouts of the postilions. Aunt Caroline had just time to ejaculate: “I wonder now who that might be!” and Barnaby Crabtree to grunt in response: “Nobody for us, I hope!” when the handsome coach was seen to swing in through the narrow gates, and — with a great deal more clatter and a vast amount more jingling — to come to a halt before the front door.

“Lord bless us all, it must be Olive!” exclaimed Aunt Caroline, as she quickly put down the pair of carvers and started fiddling nervously with the strings of her apron.

“That is no excuse, Caroline,” remarked Barnaby Crabtree acidly, “for not handing me over a further portion of lamb as I desired.”

“No, Barnaby,” said Aunt Caroline meekly.

And it was because she was then obliged to resume her work of carving and to help Cousin Barnaby with two slices of lamb, a roast potato, a spoonful of peas, and a sprinkling of mint sauce, that she was not standing at the front door to receive Sir Baldwin and his lady when the latter descended from her coach.

Indeed it was Olive who had arrived so unexpectedly. She had come in her coach, together with numerous boxes, and Sir Baldwin had ridden beside the coach all the way from Ashford.

Soon Olive was standing in the hall, meekly submitting to Aunt Caroline’s embrace, whilst Uncle Jasper fussed round them both like an old hen, and Susan stood in the doorway wide-eyed and open-mouthed, gaping at the beautiful lady with the shot silk cloak and the five huge feathers in her bonnet, until Aunt Caroline roused her from this state of semi-imbecility by giving her arm a vigorous pinch and ordering her back into her kitchen to put a couple more plates in the Dutch oven.

In the meanwhile Sir Baldwin Jeffreys, having greeted Aunt Caroline and Uncle Jasper with all the courtly grace peculiar to gentlemen who live much in London, gave directions to his servants and postilions to stable his saddle-horse in Mr. Hemingford’s stables, but to return to Ashford with the coach forthwith, since her ladyship would make a stay here for a few days. He himself would return home that selfsame evening.

Aunt Caroline’s notions of hospitality, however, would not allow her to let Sir Baldwin’s servants depart without at least a good cut off that leg of lamb when it presently found its way into the kitchen. So for at least an hour after that coachman and postilions in white and scarlet graced the huge stonewalled kitchen with their presence, and made Susan’s eyes grow larger and larger with the tales they told her of the magnificent society in London of which their master and mistress were the most fêted leaders.

All this had occurred earlier in the day, of course, for twelve o’clock was the dinner hour at Old Manor Farm, and since then everyone had had a brief hour’s rest. Uncle Jasper had retired to his museum, where he quickly forgot that he had a niece and that she had arrived that day. Aunt Caroline had vainly tried to keep awake whilst Sir Baldwin Jeffreys talked politely on agricultural subjects; she nodded over Jersey cows, and closed her eyes over late lambs, but when the harvest of sainfoin came on the tapis she frankly lay back in her chair and began to snore.

Olive in the meanwhile had found her way to the room which she used to occupy when she was a girl. It seemed mightily small and uncomfortable after the luxuries of her house in St. James’s street, or of her home near Ashford. Aunt Caroline, who had come up with her, found herself vaguely apologising for these discomforts, even though Olive had occupied that selfsame room for fifteen years of her life.

“Try and rest now, Olive dear,” she said, as she prepared to rejoin Sir Baldwin in the little front parlour, “the child will be home by the time you come down again.”

“Ah, yes!” said Olive languidly, smothering a yawn. “By the way, where is the child?”

“On some bird’s-nesting expedition,” replied Aunt Caroline, with a sigh; “she is still the tomboy you used to scold. I haven’t seen her since breakfast time, but she’ll surely be home to tea.”

Two hours later the little party was gathered around the tea-table. Aunt Caroline’s best silver teapot had come out of its green baize bag for the occasion and resplended above the china cups and saucers and the plates full of bread and butter and home-made cakes. Olive, languid and bored, was sipping her tea. Sir Baldwin, looking black as thunder, was busy whacking his boot with his riding-crop, and Cousin Barnaby Crabtree sat in the most comfortable armchair, with the dish of muffins close to his hand, and his third cup of tea nearly empty.

Susan had been sent to fetch the master, but had not yet returned.

“I declare,” said Aunt Caroline as she put down the heavy silver teapot and rose from her chair— “I declare that that girl is nothing short of an imbecile. I sent her to fetch your uncle,” she added, not specially addressing Olive, but because she always referred to her husband as “your uncle” whoever she might be talking to at the time — “I sent her to fetch your uncle, and now I hear her moving about in the scullery, and he’ll already have forgotten all about having been sent for, and all about his tea.”

“Even if he comes now,” said Barnaby Crabtree placidly, “the tea will have drawn too much, and there are no more muffins left. Leave him alone, Caroline,” he added more sternly; “he’ll come when he wants to, and in the meanwhile cut me a piece of plum cake.”

However, Aunt Caroline did not like the idea of Uncle Jasper going without his tea, so, having cut the desired piece of plum cake, she begged to be excused, and made her way straight to the museum.

There she found Uncle Jasper sitting at the top of his library steps deeply absorbed in a book.

Aunt Caroline could have smacked him, so angry did she feel.

“There you go again, Jasper,” she cried; “there you go, up in the clouds, and no more heeding your own lawful wife than a bunch of woody carrots. Jasper,” she added, seeing that indeed he took but scant notice of her, “Jasper, I say!”

And she rapped with her bunch of keys upon the back of the nearest chair.

“Eh? What?” asked Uncle Jasper meekly.

“You’ve scared that silly minx Susan out of her wits, and now your tea is getting cold, and Sir Baldwin will be going directly.”

“Sir Baldwin?” queried Uncle Jasper vacantly as he stared down at her like an old crow from its perch.

He had wholly forgotten who Sir Baldwin might be, and vaguely wondered what this gentleman’s going and coming had to do with the Vespertilio ferrum equinum, a specimen of which — so rare in the British Islands — was even now lying upon his own table.

“Jasper,” ejaculated Aunt Caroline, who you must own had grave cause for vexation, “Jasper, you don’t mean to tell me that you had forgotten that Sir Baldwin Jeffreys said at dinner-time that he must leave us directly after tea!”

“No, no, my dear,” replied Uncle Jasper vaguely; “indeed I had not forgotten that circumstance, and I am truly sorry that Sir Baldwin is going so soon.”

“A very kind word, my good Hemingford,” came in pleasing accents from Sir Baldwin Jeffreys, who had followed in Aunt Caroline’s footsteps and was even now standing at the door of the museum. “May I enter?” he added courteously.

“Of course, of course,” said Aunt Caroline. “Do enter, Sir Baldwin. Jasper was asking after you.”

When he was not scowling, as he had done ever since his arrival, Sir Baldwin could be exceedingly pleasant in his manner. He came into the room now, and at Aunt Caroline’s invitation sat on one of the chairs that did not happen to be littered with eggs and stuffed lizards.

“A very kind word indeed,” he said, “and ’tis pleasant for the parting guest when ‘so soon’ waits upon ‘farewell.’”

“Must you really go to-day, Sir Baldwin?” said Aunt Caroline.

“Alas! madam,” replied Sir Baldwin, and he sighed with becoming regret, “urgent business recalls me to London to-morrow, and I must sleep at Ashford tonight.”

“’Tis a short visit you have paid us,” she remarked.

“I only escorted my wife down from home — and now,” he said, while with old-fashioned gallantry he raised Aunt Caroline’s mittened hand to his lips, “I leave her in the safest and kindest of hands.”

“With a membrane at the end of the nose.”

This from Uncle Jasper, who, absent-minded as usual, was reading aloud to himself out of his book. Sir Baldwin looked startled, as well he might, seeing that Uncle Jasper had but a moment ago appeared to be taking part in the conversation; but Aunt Caroline remarked indignantly:

“Jasper, how can you say such a thing? I am sure Olive always had a beautiful nose!”

Whereupon Sir Baldwin laughed immoderately, and for the first time to-day cast off the gloom which had been weighing over his spirits.

“Nay!” Aunt Caroline went on quite placidly, for she did not perceive that anything funny had been said; but she was too polite to resent Sir Baldwin’s levity. “We are happy, of course, to have our Olive back with us for awhile.’ ’Tis sorely we missed her when you took her away from us.”

Then she sighed with every appearance of deep sorrow, though to be sure no one had desired a marriage for Olive more earnestly than had Aunt Caroline. But the good soul had always a remarkable store of regrets laid down somewhere in the bottom of her soul, and whenever occasion demanded she would deck out one of these regrets and trot it out for the benefit of the beholder; and the regret came out well accompanied by sighs and decked out to look very real, though in reality it only existed in Aunt Caroline’s imagination.

Having duly sighed over Olive’s most longed-for departure from Old Manor Farm, she now produced yet another fond regret.

“How I wish,” she said, “that her sister were more like her!”

“Is the child as much a tomboy, then, as ever?” asked Sir Baldwin kindly.

“Worse, my dear Sir Baldwin,” sighed Aunt Caroline—“worse! Now look at her to-day. Off she goes directly after breakfast — and only one piece of bacon did she have, though I fried a bit of the streaky, of which she is very fond. She’d be hungry — wouldn’t you think so, now? But no! Off she goes, Heaven only knows where — all alone — without asking her aunt’s permission or excusing herself for not appearing at dinner. Not in for tea, either. You saw me putting a muffin down for her by the hob. No! No dinner, no tea — and now it’s nearly four o’clock, and the child not home yet, and your uncle and I not knowing whether she has broken her neck climbing a tree or torn her stockings going through the scrub. And it isn’t that I don’t do my best with her; but, there, she’ll never be like Olive, though I do give her brimstone and peppermint once a week for her complexion! Such a name, too! Boadicea! Whatever can her poor mother have been thinking about!”

“An unusual elongation of the tail,” came solemnly from the top of the library steps.

And at this Sir Baldwin was seized with such an uncontrollable fit of laughter that his eyes were streaming and he was forced to hold his sides, for they ached furiously. What made him laugh more than anything was that Aunt Caroline was apparently under the impression that Uncle Jasper was taking part willingly in the conversation, and that his remark was a comment upon what she had said. For even now when Uncle Jasper made the funny statement about the elongation of the tail she retorted quite angrily: “She was not, Jasper! I am sure my dear sister never thought of such things.”

At which Sir Baldwin, fearing that he would break his sides, went quickly out of the room.