atient movement to his head.

"You believe me?" I ask, timidly, laying my hand on his arm.

"No, _I do not_!" he replies, shaking off my touch, and turning his
stern and glittering eyes full upon me. "I should be a _fool_ and an
_idiot_ if I did!"

Then he rises hastily and leaves me. I watch him as he joins the other
men. They are _all_ round her now--all but Musgrave.

Algy has left his corner and his reversed picture-book, moved thereto by
the unparalleled audacity of young Parker, who has pulled one of the
sofa-cushions down on the floor, and is squatting on it, like a great
toad at her feet, examining a gnat-bite on her sacred arm.

Even the old host is doing the agreeable according to his lights. In a
very loud voice he is narrating a long anecdote about a pretty girl that
he once saw at a windmill near Seville, during the Peninsular. With a
most unholy chuckle he is trying to hint that there was more between him
and the young lady than it well beseems him to tell; but fortunately no
one, but I, is listening to him.

I turn away my head, and look out of the window up at Charles's Wain,
and all my other bright old friends. No one is heeding me--no one sees
me; so I drop my hot cheek on the sill.

Suddenly I start up. Some one is approaching me: some one has thrown
himself with careless freedom on the couch beside me. It is Algy.

Having utterly failed in dislodging Mr. Parker from his cushion--having
had a suggestion on his part, on the treatment of the gnat-bite, passed
over in silent contempt--he has retired from the circle in dudgeon.

"This is lively, is not it?" he says, in an aggressively loud voice, as
if he were quarrelsomely anxious to be overheard.

I say "Hush!" apprehensively.

"As no one makes the slightest attempt to entertain _us_, we must
entertain each other, I suppose!"

"Yes, dear old boy!" I say, affectionately, "why not?--it would not be
the first time by many."

"That does not make it any the more amusing!" he says, harshly.--"I say,
Nancy"--his eyes fixing themselves with sullen greediness on the central
figure of the group he has left--on the slight round arm (after all, not
half so round or so white as Barbara's or mine)--which is still under
treatment, "_is_ eau de cologne good for those sort of bites?--her arm
_is_ bad, you know!"

"_Bad!_" echo I, scornfully; "_bad!_ why, I am _all_ lumps, more or
less, and so is Barbara! who minds _us_!"

"You ought to make your old ma