one
with a more hurried step than usual.

CHAPTER XVIII.

COURT IN THE WOODS.

'Miss Wych--my dear--all in brown?' said Mrs. Bywank doubtfully,
as her young charge was arraying herself one morning for the
woodcraft. Some rain and some matters of business had delayed
the occasion, and it was a good week since the fishing party.

'Harmonious, isn't it?' said Hazel.

'But, my dear--it looks--so sombre!' said Mrs. Bywank.

'Sombre?' said the girl, facing round upon her with such
tinges of cheek and sparkles of eye that Mrs. Bywank laughed,
too, and gave in.

'If it puts Mr. Falkirk to sleep, I can wake him up,' said
Wych Hazel, busy with her loopings. 'And as for Mr. Rollo'--

'Mr. Rollo!--is he to be of the party?' said the housekeeper.

'I suppose,--really,--he is _the_ party,' said Wych Hazel. 'Mr.
Falkirk and I scarcely deserve so festive a name by
ourselves.'

'And what were you going to say to Mr. Rollo?'

'O nothing much. He may go to sleep if he chooses--and can,'
added Miss Wych, for the moment looking her name. But the old
housekeeper looked troubled.

'My dear,' she began--'I wouldn't play off any of my pranks
upon Mr. Rollo, if I were you.'

'What is the matter with Mr. Rollo, that his life must be
insured?' said Wych, gravely confronting her old friend with
such a face that Mrs. Bywank was again betrayed into an
unwilling laugh. But she returned to the charge.

'I wouldn't, Miss Wych! Gentlemen don't understand such
things.'

'I do not think Mr. Rollo seems dull,' said the girl, with a
face of grave reflection. 'Now, Byo--what are you afraid I
shall do?' she went on, suddenly changing her tone, and laying
both hands on her old friend's shoulders.

'Why, nothing, Miss Wych, dear!--I mean,'--Mrs. Bywank
hesitated.

'You mean a great deal, I see,' said Wych Hazel. 'But do not
you see, Byo, I cannot hang out false colours? There is no
sort of use in my pretending not to be wild, because I _am_.'

Mrs. Bywank looked up in the young face,--loving and anxious.

'Miss Wych,' she said, 'what men of sense disapprove, young
ladies in general had better not do.'

'O, I cannot follow you there,' said Wych Hazel. 'Suppose, for
instance, Mr. Rollo (I presume you mean him by "men of sense")
took a kink against my brown dress?'

Not very likely, Mrs. Bywank thought, as she looked at the
figure before her. If Hazel had been a wood nymph a week ago
she was surely the loveliest of brown fairies