village; it was too self-contained and superior for a cart; it was much too early for Mrs. Moss or Mrs. Hawthorn to be taking their daily drive. I glanced at Rose; her back was to me, and she was still taken up with her grievance. With stealth I crept to the open window and leaned out. A smart dog-cart flashed by; it contained two men, but I could not see their faces. Still further I leaned out, craning my neck.

"That must be Mr. Inderwick."

The voice came from the small of my back, and I started so violently that I nearly lost my balance.

"Rose," I said severely, "I wish you would get on with your work. It is simply disgraceful the way you waste your time. You have been over half an hour in cleaning three small bed-knobs. It is nothing to you whether it is Mr. Inderwick or not Mr. Inderwick. Try and check this spirit of curiosity." And I swept from the room, leaving Rose with a most astonished countenance.

CHAPTER IV

I Receive a Snub from Mr. Inderwick Which
Renders Me Angry

N

one likes to be snubbed. Least of all a woman by a man, especially when the snub is unwarranted. Mr. Inderwick has snubbed

me, and I can never forgive him. I smiled at him last Sunday in church. The smile was one of pure friendship, of good fellowship. It came from me suddenly, before I could stop it. It was not premeditated; it came like a flash when I caught sight of him. And in returnmy cheeks still flame when I think of it—he just stared at me, a surprised, prolonged, superior, raised-eyebrows sort of stare; a stare that first seemed to turn me to stone, and then sent me down on my knees for the Litany as though I had been shot; a stare that has burnt into my brain, into my being. Shall I ever forget it? Shall I ever forget that the entire congregation of Heatherland witnessed my discomfiture (for it seemed to me that the eye of every woman of the village was fixed upon me unflinchingly)? and shall I always be shut up inside our own garden gate for the remainder of my natural life? I dare not go out; I

simply dare not run the risk of again encountering that petrified gaze.

Now, I should have behaved so differently under the circumstances had I been a man. Were nice girls to smile at me in church, I should just smile back at them whether they were known to me or not, and enjoy myself immensely. I should certainly not assume that exclusive, monarch-of-all-I-survey air; I should accept with gratitude any kindliness shown to me.

Miss Timmins used to say men were a snare and a delusion. She invariably giggled when she said this, and scratched her left shoulder-blade with her right hand. Angela said men were untidy, unpunctual, and unreliable. And I, from a spirit of opposition, said they were much nicer than women and I loved them. None of our opinions were of the slightest value to the world, for men, with the exception of dear father, were a genus unknown to us. Country villages do not produce men; they only run to women and cows and crops. Of course there are a few fathers with nicely combed beards who give half a crown to the collection on Sunday, and drive in nicely appointed carriages to the city each day to do something in cotton or shipping, but they don't count. Fathers naturally don't count as ordinary men, neither does Frederick Moss, for he is half a poet and plays the organ in church. And now I withdraw all that I said about men in the past-I don't think they are nicer than women, and I hate them.

I might have known everything would go wrong last Sunday. Things always do on a Sunday. Perhaps it is through wearing your best frock, or having kidney with your bacon for breakfast. The Lord may think you are self-indulgent, and send trouble to balance things up.

The sun and clematis together woke me-that was the only nice bit in the day. The sun was so cheerful and expansive, and the clematis tapped its velvety cups against the window-pane, and they peeped in and said"Get up; it's grand out here."

They only whispered it, but I heard them.

"Not just yet,” I murmured sleepily. “Rose hasn't been to call me. I never get up till I'm called."

"Lazybones!" they laughed. "Do you know this is just the kind of morning you love best in the world— sunny, hazy, dewy September, and the drenched dahlias and grass and bushes are drying their garments in the sunshine."

I opened one eye, but the lid of the other was too heavy to lift. Then they began again—

"I should get up if I were you. Away on Oldfield Common is a most exquisite carpet of purple and gold -it is only heather and gorse, but the scent is something divine. All the bees and bumble-bees of Heatherland are assembled there, and are humming and buzzing as though they had struck a gold mine."

"I have smelt heather and gorse and seen bees before," I said firmly.

Then they became artful.

"Mr. Inderwick will probably be in church to-day; he used to go to church in the old days, and—”

In a twinkling my bare feet were standing on a warm patch of sunlight which hovered about the faded pink rhododendrons on the carpet.

"I don't believe it," I remarked casually. "I am only getting up because it is time. I am sure Mr. Inderwick won't be at church. Men don't go much to church unless they are married, mother says, and then they go for peace and quietness, as their wives worry them so."

I sat down by the window and fell to thinkingwhat should I wear. I would like to look nice this particular Sunday, because-why, because it is a duty a girl owes to herself and her friends to look her best. Dowdy women are an eyesore.

I walked across to the wardrobe. It was quite unnecessary. I knew every garment I possessed off by heart. There was the old brown merino in which I do spring cleaning; Heatherland at one time knew it well, though a lapse of years might have caused it to be forgotten; that wouldn't do. There was a blue print frock which had shrunk in washing; a tuck had been let down, and people who might have forgotten the original color of the print could now refresh their memories by gazing at the place where the tuck had been. Angela says it doesn't matter, as it looks like a trimming. Angela has more faith in the imaginative