s is rather a terrifying object; and
how could she know that it was only Archie Drummond in his old
garden-hat, taking a constitutional?

But he brought himself up in front of her with a sudden jerk.

"Miss Challoner!--alone at this time of night!"

"Why, it is not ten; and I could not wait for Dorothy to fetch me,"
returned Phillis, bound to defend herself, and quite palpitating with
relief; not that she was afraid--not a bit of it!--but still, Mr.
Drummond's presence was very welcome.

"I suppose I shall do as well as Dorothy?" he returned veering round
with the greatest ease, just as though he were Dick, and bound to
escort a Challoner. "Challoners' Squire,"--that was Dick's name among
people.

"Oh poor Dick!" thought Phillis, with a sudden rush of tenderness for
her old playmate; and then she said, demurely but with a spice of
malice,--

"Thank you, Mr. Drummond. The road is so gloomy that I shall be glad
of your escort this evening, but we shall have to do without that sort
of thing now, for our business may often bring us out after dark, and
we must learn not to be too particular."

"Oh, this must not be!" he returned, decidedly; and, though it was too
dark to see his face, she knew by his voice that he was dreadfully
shocked. "I must see your mother and talk to her about this; for it
would never do for you to run such risks. I could not allow it for a
moment; and as your clergyman"--coming down from his high horse, and
stammering a little,--"I have surely--surely a right----" But Phillis
snapped him up in a moment, and pretty sharply too, for she had no
notion of a young man giving himself airs and torturing her.

"Oh, no right at all!" she assured him: "clergymen could only rebuke
evil-doers, to which class she and her sisters did not belong, thank
heaven!" to which Mr. Drummond devoutly said an "amen." "And would he
please tell her if dressmakers were always met two and two, like the
animals in the ark? and how would it sound when she or Nan had been
fitting on a dress, on a winter's evening, if they were to refuse to
leave the house until Dorothy fetched them? and how----" But here Mr.
Drummond checked her, and the darkness hid his smile.

"Now you are beyond me, Miss Challoner. In a matter of detail, a man,
even a parson, is often at fault. Is there no other way of managing
this odious business? Forgive me; the word slipped out by accident!
Could you not do the fitting, or whatever you call it, by