ng to get a rise out of him. Don't you know
what the name may be, neither?"

"Oh yes, I do, of course," responded Austin. "He's a Mr Ogilvie."

"Never heard of 'im," said Lubin. "Might find out at one o' the inns
if any party o' that name's been staying there, but I doubt they
wouldn't remember. Folks don't generally stay more'n one night, you
see, just to have a look at the old market-place and the church, and
then off they go next morning and don't leave no addresses. Th' only
sort as stays a day or two are the artists, and they'll stay painting
here for more'n a week at a time. It may 'a been one o' them."

"I wonder!" exclaimed Austin, struck by the idea. "Perhaps he's an
artist, after all; artists do travel, I know. I never thought of that.
However, it doesn't matter. It's only some old friend of Aunt
Charlotte's, and he's coming to call on her soon, so it isn't worth
bothering about meanwhile."

He therefore dismissed the matter from his mind, and set about the far
more profitable employment of fortifying himself by a morning's
devotion to garden-craft, both manual and mental, against the
martyrdom (as he called it) that he was to undergo that afternoon. For
Aunt Charlotte had insisted on his accompanying her to tea at the
vicarage, and this was a function he detested with all his heart. He
never knew whom he might meet there, and always went in fear of
Cobbledicks, MacTavishes, and others of the same sort. The vicar
himself he did not mind so much--the vicar was not a bad little thing
in his way; but Mrs Sheepshanks, with her patronising disapproval and
affected airs of smartness, he couldn't endure, while the Socialistic
curate was his aversion. The reason he hated the curate was partly
because he always wore black knickerbockers, and partly because he was
such chums with the MacTavish boys. How any self-respecting individual
could put up with such savages as Jock and Sandy was a problem that
Austin was wholly unable to solve, until it was suggested to him by
somebody that the real attraction was neither Jock nor Sandy, but one
of their screaming sisters--a Florrie, or a Lottie, or an Aggie--it
really did not matter which, since they were all alike. When this
once dawned upon him, Austin despised the knickerbockered curate more
than ever.

On the present occasion, however, the MacTavishes were happily not
there; the only other guest (for of course the curate didn't count)
being a friend of the curate's, wh