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246 happy. It's your temperament to be happy. My temperament is to want to be happy. Go on, please; tell me about your life. Tell me what makes you happy, and—and I shall order some. Be domestic. Say what Charlie is, and what you are, and what Philippine is. Be philosophical, if you like—yes, do be philosophical, and explain the principles of domestic happiness."

"For me or Charlie?" asked Maud.

"Both," said Lucia, and settled herself to listen.

Maud drew a long breath.

"Oh, it's so hard to explain," she said, "but it is so clear to me. Let's take Charlie first. Well, here he is, Lucia, and he and I have been here close on three weeks; and Charlie said last night that he proposed to stop till you turned him out. Doesn't that mean content? The darling doesn't know what it is that makes him so content. But it's Philippino and me. It is really. He says he doesn't want to go to Scotland, he wants to stop here, and catch one fish in the morning and none in the afternoon, and play halfpenny bridge, and—and do nothing. Ah, isn't that enough to make me content? It sounds quite common, doesn't it? for I suppose it is just love that makes me content. Yet you've got it, and you still want. How queer! It makes Charlie content, too."

That was a flashlight; there was a large area illuminated then. At one moment she felt that it was impossible that Maud should not see what his content signified, at the next she felt that it was impossible that Maud should.

A more searching flashlight, a light that pierced through the very flesh, was bull's-eyed upon her half an hour afterwards. They backed out of the clump of lilies, went alongside the wooden landing-stage, and strolled up to the house for lunch. On the terrace walk were two perambulators, being wheeled parallel the one to the other. Maud's nurse pushed one, but the other, containing Lucia's baby, had just one long strong hand on it, while the other saluted them as they came up from the lake.

"All else has failed," shouted Charlie, "and I'm being apprenticed for the post of nurse."

He had taken the perambulator from the hands of Lucia's nurse, and she was walking a little behind, with giggles and glances at the other, and an occasional, "Lor, Mr. Lindsay!" at Charlie's preposterous conversation. The two baby-carriages were axle to axle, and just as Lucia and Maud got on to the