he
wondering admiration with which I have daily regarded it, I hear the
door of our sitting-room open, and Vick give a little shrewish shrill
bark, speedily changed into an apologetic and friendly whiffling and
whoffling.

"Is that you?" cry I, holding on by the balcony, and leaning back to
peep over my own shoulder into the interior. "Come out here, if it is."

"Sir Roger is out," I say, a second later, putting my hand into that of
Mr. Musgrave (for it is he), as he comes stepping, in his usual
unsmiling, discontented beauty, to meet me.

"I know he is! I met him!"

"I am seeing the people start for Blasewitz for the last time! it makes
me quite low!" I say, replacing my arms on the balcony, and speaking
with an irrepressibly jovial broad smile on my face that rather
contradicts my words.

"You _look_ low," he answers, ironically, standing beside me, and
looking rather provoked at my urbanity.

"This time to-morrow we shall be off," say I, beginning to laugh out of
pure light-heartedness, though there is no joke within a mile of me, and
to count on my fingers; "this time the day after to-morrow we shall be
at Cologne--this time the day after _that_ we shall be getting toward
Brussels--this time the day after _that_, we shall be getting toward
Dover--this time the day after _that_--"

"You will all be rushing higgledy-piggledy, helter-skelter, into each
other's arms," interrupts my companion, looking at me with a lowering
eye.

"Yes," say I, my eyes dancing. "You are quite right."

"Algy, and the Brat, and--what is the other fellow's
name?--Dicky?--Jacky?--Jemmy?--"

"Bobby," say I, correcting him. "But you are not quite right; the Brat
will not be there!--worse luck--he is in Paris!"

"Well, Barbara will not be in Paris," says the young man, still in the
same discontented, pettish voice. "_She_ will be there, no doubt--well
to the front--in the thickest of the osculations."

"_That_ she will!" cry I, heartily. "But you must give up calling her
Barbara; that is not at all pretty manners."

"We will make a bargain," he says, beginning to smile a little, but
rather as if it were against his will and intention. "I will allow her
to call me 'Frank,' if she will allow me to call her 'Barbara.'"

"I dare say you will" (laughing).

A little pause. Another person has got into the omnibus; it is growing
extremely full.

"I _hate_ last days," says my companion, hitting viciously at the iron
balcony rails wit