Perhaps the Youth had forgotten. At all events, having bidden good-bye to the others, he shook hands last of all with his hostess, and said lightly—
"Thank you very much. I have enjoyed the whole thing tremendously."
Then he jumped into the waggonette, and took off his cap as a parting salute; and away he went. The Laird frowned. When he was a young man that was not the way in which hospitality was acknowledged.
Then Mary Avon turned from regarding the departing waggonette.
"Are we to get ready to start?" said she.
"What do you say, sir?" asks the hostess of the Laird.
"I am at your service," he replies.
And so it appeared to be arranged. But still Queen Titania looked irresolute and uneasy. She did not at once set the whole house in an uproar; or send down for the men; or begin herself to harry the garden. She kept loitering about the door; pretending to look at the signs of the weather. At last Mary said—
"Well, in any case, you will be more than an hour in having the things carried down; so I will do a little bit more to that sketch in the meantime."
The moment she was gone, her hostess says in a hurried whisper to the Laird—