With the new year the damp, wet weather set in again, and it was generally conceded that it was much better that the children should be kept in the country.
"That is such a little poky house in town," Agnes Brenton declared.
Nevertheless, Camilla clung to the poky little house, although Haverford urged her all the time to fix a definite date for their marriage.
"Why should we wait?" he asked, very reasonably; "we have really no one to consult or consider. I am just longing for you to come into my great empty house and turn it into a home."
Camilla chose to treat the matter flippantly.
"Oh, is that all you want me for? Well, my dear Rupert, if you want a nice, comfortable, domesticated, housekeepery sort of a woman, I know the very person for you. I am ornamental, you know—exceedingly ornamental, but I am not the least bit of good to look after the linen, or to mend your socks, and I couldn't boil an egg to save my life."
Another time he said to her—
"I want to get you away from this house. I want to take you out of all that belonged to old times and sorrows. Have you forgotten that we are to go to Italy? To all the places where you were so happy with your father? Let us be married and start at once."
But Camilla always pleaded for time.
"I tell you why," she said to him once. "I want you—us—to get thoroughly well used to one another. Of course, you have known me a long time—it is nearly two years since we met—but there are such heaps of things we ought to realize before we make our great start together. I have made a little promise to myself," Camilla said weightily, "that I will not marry you till I have taught myself to be a little worthy of you."