Meg's eyes were shining. Freddy was so boyish and yet so much her elder brother. How she loved him!
"Thanks, old chap," Michael said. "I suppose Meg's told you all about it?—I mean, how I'm not going to let her bind herself to me? We love each other, and I forgot and told her I did."
Freddy laughed. "If something better than you, you old drifter, turns up, she's to be free to take him. Of course, something will!"
"Yes," Michael said. "Or if . . ." he paused.
"If you prove too unpractical for a husband, you old humbug, I'm to cancel the engagement!"
Meg linked her arm in her brother's. "I'm quite practical, enough for us both," she said. "The Lampton common sense wants leavening. We never rise to heights, Freddy—we're solid dough."
"We manage to get down into the bowels of the earth, which helps a bit, if we can't soar very high."
All three laughed. Freddy meant the tomb, of course.
Freddy was smoking a cigarette. His eyes were following the two donkeys which were taking Millicent and her friend down the valley. They looked like white insects in the distance; they had travelled rapidly, as donkeys will travel on their homeward journey.
"The fair Millicent!—and, by Jove, she is fair!"—Freddy said, meditatively, "didn't come here to find out your engagement—don't imagine so. She managed to carry away some information more difficult to obtain than that." He laughed and quoted the old saying, "Love, like light, cannot be hid. What a pity she isn't all as nice as the nice parts of her, or as nice as she is pretty!"