ite radiantly.

"Oh, dear!" exclaimed Mattie, fussily coming up at that moment. "I
don't know what has become of your cousin; but Captain Middleton says
all the trains have been snowed up."

"If the train he is in has been snowed up, of course we must not
expect to see him this evening," was Phillis's laughing reply. "Never
mind; I dare say we shall all survive it; though Harry is such a good
fellow, and I am immensely fond of him."

"Oh, but the tea and coffee will be spoiled. I must go and pour it out
now. Look, Grace is making signs to me."

"Shall I come and help you?" was the ready response. "What a pretty
little tea-table, Mattie, and how charmingly snug it looks in the
bay-window! The gentlemen will wait on us, of course. I like this way
better than servants handing round lukewarm cups from the kitchen: it
is not so grand, but it is cosier. Was it your arrangement, Mattie?"

"Oh, yes," returned Mattie, in a disconsolate tone, as she took her
place. "But, Phillis, are you really not anxious about your cousin? It
is so dreadful to think of him snowed up all night, with nothing to
eat and drink!"

Phillis laughed outright at this.

"My imagination will not conjure up such horrors. I believe Harry is
at this moment sitting in the hotel discussing a good dinner before a
blazing fire." And, as Mattie looked injured at this, she continued,
still more merrily: "My dear, are you such an ignoramus as to believe
that any amount of wax candles and charming women will induce an
Englishman to forego his dinner? He will come by and by; and if he
gets cold coffee, he will have his deserts." And then Mattie's anxious
face grew more cheerful.

The tea-table became the nucleus of the whole room before long. Even
Mr. Frere, a tall scholarly-looking man, with spectacles and a very
bald head, though he was still young, seemed drawn magnetically into
the circle that closed round Phillis. The girl was so natural and
sprightly, there was such buoyancy and brightness in her manner; and
yet no man could ever have taken a liberty with her, or mistaken the
source of that pure rippling fun. The light jesting tone, the
unembarrassed manner, were as free from consciousness as though there
were gray-headed dons round her. And yet, alas for Phillis! there was
not a word uttered in a certain voice that did not reach her ear
somehow; not a movement that was lost upon her, even when she chatted
and laughed with those who stood round her.