g from the town together. The colonel was carrying his
stick musket-wise over his shoulder, and had the vicar by the arm,
when Phillis and Dulce came out of the gateway of the White House. As
the girls passed Archie, they smiled at him and nodded, and Phillis,
in a pretty way she had, waved her hand; and then they went on rapidly
towards the Friary. As they did so, Colonel Middleton groaned, and
touched his companion's arm impressively.

"There, now, Drummond, did you ever see girls with a better
carriage?--heads up--light springy step? Why, it is a pleasure even to
an old fellow like myself to watch them. Fancy that taller one on
horseback in the Row! Why, she would cut out half the girls. And think
that one dare not notice them!" And he struck his stick into the
ground almost angrily.

Archie smiled: he could not help it. The colonel was so whimsical in
his wrath.

"They had plenty of notice from the folk at the White House," he
returned, quietly.

"Ah, Cheyne was always a bit of a Radical, and madam is no better.
They can do as they like, without being afraid of consequences. But
that is not my case." And, as Archie looked at him rather mystified,
he went on: "Bless me, you do not suppose I am afraid of knowing them
for my own sake? Elizabeth tells me that she is intimate with them.
But that is not my business, so long as she does not have them at
Brooklyn. 'We must draw the line there, Elizabeth,' I said. 'If you
choose to visit your dressmakers, it is not for me to prevent you; you
are old enough to select your own friends, so you may be as eccentric
as you like. But your brother is coming home. Young men are young men;
and I do not choose to expose Hammond to such temptation.'"

"Oh, Hammond! That is your son, I suppose?" asked Archie, who was much
amused at the colonel's earnestness.

"Yes; my boy Hammond! the finest fellow in the regiment, though I say
it, who should not. Do you think that I, his father, would expose him
to such danger as to throw him into the society of a set of
fascinating young women who have chosen to emancipate themselves from
all conventionality, and who call themselves--stuff and
rubbish!--dressmakers?"

"Not call themselves, so: they are excellent dressmakers!" was
Archie's somewhat malicious reply.

"All the more reason that my son should not know them!" thundered the
old man. "What, sir! an officer in one of her Majesty's regiments--the
son and grandson of officers,--is such