ed. We all sat on the verandah, and Mr. Trowbridge told us things
about astronomy, in which he seems as learned as in everything else.
By-and-by it was ten o'clock, and Mrs. Trowbridge asked if I weren't
tired, and wouldn't like to go to bed. Then I knew the worst. There
wasn't going to be any supper.

We all bade each other good-night.

"What time is breakfast?" I asked Mrs. Trowbridge, expecting something
abnormal in the way of earliness, but my eyes did open when she said
half-past six.

"You don't need to get up unless you want," she went on. "Patty or Ide
will carry you up something."

I wouldn't hear of that, though. I said I would prefer to do what
everybody else did, and I saw that this pleased Mr. Trowbridge, who had
perhaps feared I would show symptoms of the pampered aristocrat. But he
little knows what small pampering I get at home!

By-and-by I stood at my window, watching the fireflies and envying them
because they could get their own supper. Just then among the trees
there was a bigger, yellower light than their tiny lanterns. A faint
smell of good tobacco smoke came up.

"Lady Betty, is that you?" asked Mr. Brett's voice.

"Yes," I answered, pushing up the frame with the mosquito netting, and
leaning over the window sill.

"I've got something for you. Have you a box or basket you can let down
with string, if I toss a ball of it up to you?"

"There's a small waste-paper basket," I said, quite excited.

He tossed, and I caught--Stan taught me how, long ago. Then I made the
basket ready and sent it down.

"Now," he called after a minute. I hauled the basket up carefully.

"Good-night," said he. "There's a note in it, among other things. Now,
pull down your mosquito net, or you'll have trouble."

It was fun opening the basket. There were two chicken sandwiches in it,
in a napkin, a piece of jelly cake, a peach, and an ice-cold bottle of
milk.

The note was just a few lines scribbled with pencil on a sheet torn
from a memorandum book.

"I've been feeling wretchedly guilty about you," it began, "almost as
much of a brute as if you were some innocent, helpless creature I'd
killed, and buried under the leaves in the woods. No tea this
afternoon, and you an English girl! When they say 'tea' here they mean
the evening meal--the last one. I, like a beast, didn't notice that you
ate nothing; not that I wasn't thinking of you, for I was. I didn't
even have the sense to realise that you were being s