e for her to call and
talk it over with them quietly. Help them!--of course she would help
them. They should have her new silk dress that Uncle Conway had just
sent her. It was a risk, for perhaps they might spoil it; but such
fine creatures should have a chance. At present she would only enjoy
the nice tea, and talk to poor little frightened Dulce, who seemed
unable to open her lips after her sister's disclosure.

Archie could not emulate her ease: a man is always at a disadvantage
in such a case. His interest had sustained no shock: it was even
stimulated by what he had just heard; but his sympathy seemed all at
once congealed, and he could find no vent for it. In spite of his best
efforts his manner grew more and more constrained every moment.

Nan looked at him more than once with reproachful sweetness. She
thought they had lost caste in his eyes; but Phillis, who was shrewd
and sharp-set in her wits, read him more truly. She knew--having
already met a score of such--how addicted young Englishmen are to
_mauvaise honte_, and how they will hide acute sensibilities under
blunt and stolid exteriors; and there was a certain softness in Mr.
Drummond's eye that belied his stiffness. Most likely he was very
sorry for them, and did not know how to show it; and in this she was
right.

Mr. Drummond was very sorry for them; but he was still more grieved
for himself. The Oxford fellow had not long been a parish priest, and
he could not at all understand the position in which he found
himself,--taking tea with three elegant young dressmakers who talked
the purest English and had decided views on tennis and horticulture.
He had just been congratulating himself on securing such companionship
for his sister and himself. Being rather classical-minded, he had been
calling them the gray-eyed Graces, and one of them at least "a
daughter of the gods,--divinely tall and most divinely fair;" for
where had he seen anything to compare with Nan's bloom and charming
figure? Dressmakers!--oh, if only Grace were at hand, that he might
talk to her, and gain her opinion how he was to act in such case!
Grace had the stiff-necked Drummond pride as well as he, and would
hesitate long behind the barriers of conventionality. No wonder, with
all these thoughts passing through his mind, that Nan, with her bright
surface talk, found him a little vague.

It was quite a relief to all the party when Mattie gave the signal for
departure and the bell was