'Dear me !' repeats Prue, under her breath, in a rather awed voice; I wonder what it feels like to be damaged!' 'You had better ask her,' drily.

'I suppose she says dreadful things,' continues the young girl, still with that same awed curiosity. 'I heard Mrs. Evans telling you that she "stuck at nothing." I wonder how she does it.'

'You had better ask her,' more drily.

'Damaged or not damaged,' cries Prue, springing up from her knees and beginning to caper about the room, and sing to her own capering, 'we shall meet her to-night—

"For I'm to be married to-day, to-day,

For I'm to be married to-day."

Or if I am not to be married, I am to go to my first dinner-party, which is a step in the right direction. Do you remember your first dinner-party, Peggy? How did you feel? How did you look?'

'I looked very plain, I believe,' replies Peggy sedately. 'At least, I was told so afterwards. I remember that I

felt

very swollen. I had a cold, and was shy, and I think both combined to make me feel swelled.'

'It is a pity that shyness has not the same effect upon me,' says Prue, stretching out a long girlish arm, whose thinness is apparent even through its chintz muslin covering. The one thing that would really improve my appearance-stopping before the only looking-glass that the little room beasts, and putting her finger and thumb in the hollows of cheeks scarcely rounded enough to match the rest of the pansy-textured child face--the one thing that would really improve my appearance would be to have the mumps.'

Peggy laughs.

6

Unberufen! I should catch them, and you cannot say that they would improve me.'

'Never mind!' cries Prue, turning away with a joyous whirl from the mirror. 'I shall do very well.

There are

people who admire bones! I shall pass in a crowd.

For I'm to be married to-day, to-day,

For I'm to be married to-day.' """

Her dance and her song have carried her out into the garden-the small but now opulent garden; and, partly to look at her, partly to pasture her eyes upon a yet more admired object, Peggy has followed her as far as to the French window, and now stands leaning one handsome shoulder against the door-post, and looking out upon her kingdom of flowers.

'We owe the Big House one good thing, at all events,' she says, a smile of satisfaction stealing into her comely eyes. ‘I never knew what peace of mind was until I had a garden-hose.'

At this moment, in the hands of Jacob the gardener, it is playing comfortably on the faces of the tea-roses, and a luxurious drip and patter testify to their appreciation.

Prue has come back panting, and sunk out of breath on the window-sill. The briony garland has fallen from her hat, and a little hairy dog is now galloping about the lawn boastfully with it, his head held very high. Something in his attitude gets on the nerves of the other animals; for the parrot, brought out to sun himself upon the sward, raps out his mysterious marine oath, which he generally keeps for a crisis; and the white cat forgets herself so far as to deal him a swingeing box on the ear as he passes her.

'I met the brougham from the Big House as I came up the lane,' says Prue, trying to cool herself with the inadequate fan of a small pocket-handkerchief; 'it was on its way back from the station. How tired those poor horses must be of the road to the station! It had three people inside it— Lady Betty, Mr. Harborough, and some third person.'

'Her maid, probably.'

Prue shakes her head.

'No; the maid followed in a fly with the nurses and children. Dear me, Peggy, what a number of servants they take about with them-maid, one; valet, two; footman, three; two nurses, five!'

'Nurses, five!' repeats Margaret inattentively, not thinking of what she is saying, and with her eyes still riveted on the hose; 'surely that is a very unusual number, isn't it?'

'I could not see the third person distinctly,' continues Prue narratively; 'but I think it was the man whom Lady Betty brought with her last year. She seems always to bring him with her.'

'More shame for her!' replies Peggy severely.

'Mr. Harborough was very fond of him, too,' says Prue reflectively. He called him "John.""

'More fool he!' still severelier; then, with a sudden and happy change of key, 'That is right, Jacob. Give it a good souse; it is covered with fly.'

'Do not you wonder what we shall do to-night?' cries Prue, her mind galloping gaily away from the blackness of Lady Betty's deeds to the splendid whiteness of her own immediate prospect. 'Charades? dancing? I prophesy

dancing.

"For Willy will dance with Jane,"

bursting out into song again—

"And Betty has got her John."'

9

She breaks off, laughing. Margaret laughs too. 'Betty may have got her John, but I am sure I do not know who Peggy and Prue will have, unless Freddy can split himself up into several young gentlemen at once. can do most things'-with a touch of bitterness-' possibly he can do that too.'

He

'Or perhaps we shall go out star-gazing in the walled garden,' interrupts Prue, hurriedly and redly shying away from the name thus introduced. 'I always think that the stars look bigger from the walled garden than anywhere else in the world.'

'Was it there that you and Freddy went to look for Cassiopeia's Chair?' inquires Peggy drily; 'and were more than an hour and a half before you could find her?'

'It is so odd that I had never noticed her before,' cries Prue hastily. She is such a queer shape, more like a long

straggling W than a chair.'

'And, after all,' continues Margaret slowly, with an uneasy smile, and not paying any heed to her sister's interpolation, she turned out to be in the kiosk.'

Prue is silent. The little hairy dog has brought her ruined garland back to her feet; and, holding it between his fore-paws, is painstakingly biting off each leaf and tendril, and strewing them over the close-shaven sward. The parrot is going to sleep, standing on one leg, and making a clacking noise with his beak; not a posture that one would have thought à priori conducive to slumber.

'It was not a place in which one would have expected to find a large constellation, was it?' asks Peggy, still with that same rather rueful smile, and stroking her sister's childish head as she speaks-'the darkest corner of a kiosk.'

But at that Prue leaps to her feet; and having, in the twinkling of an eye, twitched the hose out of Jacob's hand, she points it at her sister.

'Mention the word kiosk once more,' cries she desperately, and winking away a couple of tears, 'and you will not have a dry stitch upon you.'

CHAPTER II

'Ave Maria! 'Tis the hour of prayer!
Ave Maria! "Tis the hour of love!'

AVE MARIA! 'tis the hour of dinner, too; and towards that dinner, about to be spread at the Big House, the inmates of the little one are hastening on foot through the park. Brougham have they none; goloshes and a lanthorn their only substitute. The apricot sunset and the harvest moon will be their two lanthorns to-night; but upon the goloshes Peggy has, in the case of her sister, sternly insisted. Hastening through the park-alternately hastening, that is to say—and loitering, as Prue's fear of being too late, and Peggy's better-grounded apprehension of being too early, get the upper hand.

'How calm you are!' cries the young girl feverishly, as Margaret stops for a moment to

'Suck the liquid air'

of the ripe harvest evening, and admire the velvet-coated stags springing through the bracken. 'How can you be so calm? Were you calm at your first dinner-party?'

'I cannot recollect,' replies Peggy, honestly trying to recall the now five-years-old dead banquet referred to. 'I can only remember that I felt swelled.'

'Do not you think that we might go on now?' asks Prue, anxiously kicking one golosh against the other. We cannot be much too soon; our clocks are always slow.