ight about
the Bailey family and the correct way to spell chicken? She drove me to
the verge of insanity, and I haven't a doubt that this Patricia person
will be quite as obstreperous. So, please mention it to her,
Agatha--casually, of course--that, in Lichfield, when one is partial to
either vocal exercise or amorous daliance, the proper scene of action is
the garden. I really cannot be annoyed by her."

"But, Rudolph," his sister protested, "you forget she is engaged to the
Earl of Pevensey. An engaged girl naturally wouldn't care about meeting
any young men."

"H'm!" said the colonel, drily.

Ensued a pause, during which the colonel lighted yet another cigarette.

Then, "I have frequently observed," he spoke, in absent wise, "that all
young women having that peculiarly vacuous expression about the eyes--I
believe there are misguided persons who describe such eyes as being
'dreamy,'--are invariably possessed of a fickle, unstable and coquettish
temperament. Oh, no! You may depend upon it, Agatha, the fact that she
contemplates purchasing the right to support a peculiarly disreputable
member of the British peerage will not hinder her in the least from
making advances to all the young men in the neighborhood."

Miss Musgrave was somewhat ruffled. She was a homely little woman with
nothing of the ordinary Musgrave comeliness. Candor even compels the
statement that in her pudgy swarthy face there was a droll suggestion
of the pug-dog.

"I am sure," Miss Musgrave remonstrated, with placid dignity, "that you
know nothing whatever about her, and that the reports about the earl
have probably been greatly exaggerated, and that her picture shows her
to be an unusually attractive girl. Though it is true," Miss Musgrave
conceded after reflection, "that there are any number of persons in the
House of Lords that I wouldn't in the least care to have in my own
house, even with the front parlor all in linen as it unfortunately is.
So awkward when you have company! And the Bible does bid us not to put
our trust in princes, and, for my part, I never thought that photographs
could be trusted, either."

"Scorn not the nobly born, Agatha," her brother admonished her, "nor
treat with lofty scorn the well-connected. The very best people are
sometimes respectable. And yet," he pursued, with a slight hiatus of
thought, "I should not describe her as precisely an attractive-looking
girl. She seems to have a lot of hair,--if it is all her