sounds like
pleasure.

"Ah! this is all right! You are here to-night at all events; but,
by-the-by, what became of you yesterday?"

"What always becomes of me?" reply I, bluntly, lifting my grave gray
eyes to his face, and to the hair which sweeps thick and waved above his
broad brown forehead. (Tongs indeed!)

"I remember that you told me you had been _cooking_, but you cannot cook
_every_ night."

"Not quite," reply I, with a short smile, stretching my hands to the
blaze.

"But do not you dine generally?"

"Never when I can possibly help it," I reply, with emphasis. And no
sooner are the words out of my mouth than I see that I have already
transgressed my mother's commands, and given vent to one of "my unlucky
things." I stand silent and ashamed, reflecting that no after-tinkering
will mend my unfortunate speech.

"And to-night you could not help it?" he asks, after a slight, hardly
perceptible pause.

I look up to answer him. He is forty-seven years old. He is a general,
and a sir, and has been in every known land; has killed big and little
beasts, and known big and little people, and I am nineteen and nobody,
and have rarely been beyond our own park and parish, and my acquaintance
is confined to half a dozen turnipy squires and their wives; and yet he
is looking snubbed, and it is I that have snubbed him. Well, I cannot
help it. Truth is truth; and so I answer, in a low voice:

"No, father said I was to."

"And you look upon it as a great penance?" he says, still with that
half-disappointed accent.

"To be sure I do," reply I, briskly. "So does Barbara. Ask her if she
does not. So would you, if you were I."

"And why?"

"Hush!" say I, hearing a certain heavy, well-known, slow footfall. "He
is coming! I will tell you by-and-by--when we are by ourselves."

After all, how convenient an elderly man is! I could not have said that
to any of the young squires!

His blue eyes are smiling in the fire-light, as, leaning one strong
shoulder against the mantel-piece, he turns to face me more fully.

"And when are we likely to be by ourselves?"

"Oh, I do not know," reply I, indifferently. "Any time."

And then father enters, and I am dumb. Presently, dinner is announced,
and we walk in; I on father's arm. He addresses me several times with
great _bonhomie_ and I respond with nervous monosyllables. Father is
always suavity itself to us, when we have guests; but, when one is not
in the habit of being tre