n the vicinity of 4 A.M.--a radiant hour in
the summer dawn, but then in winter, the time when bed is most
alluring, when the passengers' breath congeals on the window-panes,
they complain that the foot-warmers have got cold, and give yet one
more twist to their comforters and another tug at their 'possum or
wallaby rugs. This train passed with its shaking thunder, drew into
Noonoon for refreshments, then on and on with noisy energy, but still
Miss Flipp did not return.

I concluded that she must have decided to leave us in this fashion, or
that I had missed her entry during the rumble of a passing train, or
mayhap I had snoozed for a moment, or perhaps an hour, as the
unsympathetic heavy sleepers aver the insomnists must do; and ceasing
to be on the alert any longer, I really slept.

FIFTEEN.

ALAS! MISS FLIPP!

I hastened to appear at the half-past seven breakfast, as no excuse
for non-appearance was taken, and the only concession made to Miss
Flipp, who had not been present at it for some time, was that she
could make herself a cup of cocoa when she chose to rise. For this
meal grandma ladled out the porridge and flavoured it with milk and
sugar in the usual way.

"I say, Dawn, which of them blokes, Ernest or Dora, is the best
boat-puller?" inquired Andrew as he received his portion. "You were
mighty stingy with the sugar, grandma!"

"Dora isn't in it," responded Carry. "Mr Ernest could get ahead of him
every time."

"So he ought!" said Dawn. "His ears are the size of a pair of sails,
and would pull him along."

Thus was published another defect in my knight, till I feared that it
must be only my partial gaze that discerned a knight at all.

"Dear me," interposed grandma, "a man can't look or speak or walk but he's
this, that, and the other. Things weren't so in my day. Of course there
were some things that were took exception to, but there must be reason in
everythink, an' I don't see what difference a man's ears being a little big
makes. My father's ears--your great-grandfather's--was none too small, an'
he was always a good kind man."

"I don't care if my own ears were big, it wouldn't make me like them,"
said the irrepressible Dawn; and grandma had just finished what she
termed "dosing" the last plate of porridge, when we were interrupted
by the appearance of policeman Danby at the French Lights. There was
nothing strange in this appearance of the embodiment of the law, even
at that early ho