think we are going to have a
change?" The man looks up from his work, wonders at your solicitude,
opines "the gentry folk have queer ways," but answers honestly enough,
according to his convictions, in the negative--perhaps giving some
local reasons for his opinion, which, if an old man, he will tell you
he has never known to fail. Lastly, you quarrel with every one of your
non-hunting friends, whose unfeeling observations on "fine seasonable
weather" and "healthy, bracing frosts" you feel to be brutal in the
extreme.

How I hated the frost at Dangerfield! My only chance of meeting with
Frank Lovell was out hunting. I had written him an answer to his note
(I have often heard Aunt Horsingham say that nothing is so inexcusable
as not to answer a letter), and I had no possible means of delivering
it. I could not put it in the bag, for my aunt keeps the key. I did
not like to entrust it to any of the servants, and my own maid is the
last person in whose power I should choose to place myself. I did once
think of asking Cousin John to give it to Frank, and throwing myself
on kind, good John's generosity, and confessing everything to him, and
asking for his advice; but somehow I could not bring myself to it. If
he had been my brother, nothing would have been easier; but John is
only a cousin, and one or two little things of late had made me
suspect that he liked me even better than cousins generally do; so
altogether I thought I would leave it alone--besides, John was going
off to shoot pheasants in Wales. The third morning of the frost he
came down to breakfast in a suit of wondrous apparel that I knew meant
a move in some direction, and I attacked him accordingly.

"Is that killing 'get-up' entirely for our benefit, John?" I asked;
"or are you bound on some expedition that requires more fascinations
than common?"

John coloured--he has taken to blushing lately. "I'm going down to
Wales for a few days' shooting, Kate," was his reply. "I shall come
back again when the frost breaks up if Lady Horsingham will be good
enough to receive me." Aunt Horsingham is always very civil to John,
and so is Cousin Amelia. People generally are to young bachelors. I
wonder why men ever marry; they are so much more in request without
wives and children.

"Always happy to see _you_," said Aunt Horsingham, with an emphasis on
the pronoun. "By-the-way, what is your address in Wales, that I may
forward your letters?"

John looked rather gui