sent--an advertisement sample--to him by the morning's post, and had not
yet been disposed of.

Miss Bibby wrote on, glowing with fellow-feeling.

"In conclusion," he added, "I am a strict teetotaler, and I never
smoke."

Then it occurred to him "Greenways" might have seen the red end of a
cigar on the "Tenby" verandah, and he added, "except an occasional cigar
under medical orders."

He rose from his chair and gazed pensively at his black socked feet.

Miss Bibby fluttered up at once, handed back his pen, and hurriedly tore
off from the block her last written sheet.

"I can never, never thank you enough," she said, and held out to him a
hand that somehow pleased him, and made him compunctious at the same
time--such a white, slender, gentlewoman's hand it was.

But then he remembered his hero had not yet proposed, and assuredly
would not to-day after such an interruption. He told himself that she
had deserved all she got, and that she would, at all events, earn the
six guineas she was so eager about.

"Oh, don't mention it," he said gallantly, and turned her over to Kate,
who was just coming along to satisfy herself that actual murder had not
been committed.

She fluttered back one moment, however, just as he was closing the
door.

"I believe interviews have to be signed as authentic by their subject,
have they not?" she said; "forgive me for troubling you again."

"Oh, have they?" he said. His fountain-pen was in his hand. "Where shall
I put the signature? I suppose you will copy all this out again; suppose
I write on this blank slip?"

"That will do nicely," she said.

"I guarantee this to be an authentic interview, Hugh Kinross, his mark,"
he scrawled lazily across the page.

When he took his seat at the tea-table that night Kate came behind him
and kissed the top of his head, an unusual mark of affection, for they
were an undemonstrative couple in general.

"Dear old Hughie," she said, "you have given delight to more than one
person."

"I believe I have, K," he said genially.

CHAPTER X

ANNA ENJOYS ILL-HEALTH

"Anna," said Miss Bibby, with happy eyes the next morning, "I am going
to take a whole holiday to-day."

"An' about time," said Anna, "I've been wonderin' how long you could
keep it up, Miss Bibby. You've not had one yet, and me half a dozen. I
don't have half as much to do with those childerun as you, but if I
didn't get away from them sometimes I'd get hysterics."

"I a