g-place.
If it is, they ought to mend the roof and put a new carpet down and
make things cleaner and more respectable. Well, Squire, you have silver
enough to tempt all the rogues in Yorkshire, and there's a lot of them.
But now I've seen it, I'll go home with these bits of paper. I shall be
a very important woman to-night. Them two lads won't know how to fleech
and flatter me enough. I'll be waited on hand and foot. And Nicholas
will get a bit of a set-down. He was bragging about Miss Ethel bringing
his invitation to his hand and promising to dance with him. I wouldn't
do it if I were Miss Ethel. She'll find out, if she does, what it means
to dance with a man that weighs twenty stone, and who has never turned
hand nor foot to anything but money-making for thirty years."

She went away with a sweep and a rustle of her shimmering silk skirt,
and left behind her such an atmosphere of hearty good-nature as made
the last rush and crowd of preparations easily ordered and quickly
accomplished. Before her arrival there had been some doubt as to the
weather. She brought the shining sun with her, and when he set, he left
them with the promise of a splendid to-morrow--a promise amply redeemed
when the next day dawned. Indeed, the sunshine was so brilliant, the
garden so gay and sweet, the lawn so green and firm, the avenues so
shady and full of wandering songs, that it was resolved to hold the
preliminary reception out of doors. Ethel and Ruth were to receive on
the lawn, and at the open hall door the Squire would wait to welcome his
guests.

Soon after five o'clock there was a brilliant crowd wandering and
resting in the pleasant spaces; and Ethel, wearing a diaphanously white
robe and carrying a rush basket full of white carnations, was moving
among them distributing the flowers. She was thus the center of a
little laughing, bantering group when the Nicholas Rawdon party arrived.
Nicholas remained with the Squire, Mrs. Rawdon and the young men
went toward Ethel. Mrs. Rawdon made a very handsome appearance--"an
aristocratic Britannia in white liberty silk and old lace," whispered
Ruth, and Ethel looked up quickly, to meet her merry eyes full of some
unexplained triumph. In truth, the proud mother was anticipating a great
pleasure, not only in the presentation of her adored son, but also in
the curiosity and astonishment she felt sure would be evoked by his
friend. So, with the boldness of one who brings happy tidings, she
pres