Lavinia by Rhoda Broughton — Read

"It is for homely features to keep home, / They have their name thence; coarse complexions / And cheeks of sorry grain have leave to ply / The sampler, and to tease the house-wife's wool. / What need a vermeil-tinctured lip for that? / Love-darting eyes, and tresses like the morn?"

The August sun is assuring the Rectory garden, as plainly as his beams can speak, that no scurvy trick shall be played with the marquee erected this morning with some trepidation of spirit -- since the two previous days have been rainy -- on the cricket-ground. In proof of his good faith, the God of Day is dragging their hottest spices out of the petunias and heliotropes, and out of Miss Brine the prudent counsel, addressed to her pupils, to put cabbage leaves in their hats. But how can paltry apprehensions of the off-chance of a sunstroke influence minds occupied by the knowledge that the whole air is full of the sense of approaching festivity? Have not the hen-coops been moved from the banks of the Tugela River, in order that rounders may be played there? Is not there to be a tug-of-war on the grass plot before the front door? Has not a "donkey" been erected in a clear space of the shrubbery? Are not numerous old boxes being chopped up into trays, to be used for tobogganing down the steep slope above the parterre? That the treat to the choir boys of St. Gengulpha's Church, Martin Street, Soho, London, which in her maiden days Mrs. Darcy used, for the sake of its excellent music, to frequent, is an annual one, does not lessen the excitement with which the arrival of the early afternoon train, and the hired brake and Rectory waggonette that convey the guests from Sutton Rivers station, is expected.