uddenly, for each displayed a blot as a
full stop.

Max was the first to recover himself. He remembered he had a use for
this man.

"Did you ling me a lalagmite?" he demanded.

"Oh, yes," cried Muffie, "our stalagtites,--did you break some off? We
knowed a boy that got one in a dark cave when the guard wasn't looking
and pushed it up his sleeve to carry. Did you?"

"Not this time," said Hugh; "but look here, young people, I didn't come
to see you to-day. Where's Miss Bibby?"

At this question Paul began to revolve faster and faster on a downward
journey simply to save herself the embarrassment of answering, and Lynn
fell to writing a new sentence in her letter with great assiduity.

But Muffie had no qualms.

"She doesn't want to see you, and she said we could talk to you and she
wasn't at home," she answered.

"But she doesn't know yet who it is," objected Hugh.

"Yes she does," said Muffie, "she sawed you coming up the path."

"An' she lushed out of the loom," volunteered Max.

"Well," said Hugh, "she's got to see me, for it's very important. Will
you go to her room, Muffie, and say Mr. Kinross begs to see her as a
special favour?"

"Oh," said Muffie, "she isn't in her room. When you say you're not at
home you go and stand out in the garden till the visitors go."

"You don't," argued Lynn, "only Mrs. Merrick; but mother says 'No,' an'
she never does, an' it just means 'engaged,' only it's not so rude."

"Well," said Hugh desperately, "will you penetrate to the spot in the
garden where Miss Bibby's notions of honour may have taken her, Lynn,
and say Mr. Kinross will be greatly obliged if she will see him for five
minutes?"

"I really couldn't," said Lynn distressedly. "I'm very sorry, but I'm
sure she wouldn't like me to."

"Very well," said Hugh, "I shall simply go and find her myself," and he
pushed up the French window and stepped out into the garden.

"_We_ gen'ally hide ahind the waratahs or the bamboos, or up a tree's a
good place," said Muffie, much interested.

If it were hide-and-seek about to begin, this is where Max shone. He
laid down his pen and slipped down from his chair.

"I'll find her for you," he said. "I find licker than any one. Once I
found Paul an' she was lapped up in the sheets in the linen less."

But Hugh had made off towards the bamboos without any help. He could see
a moving dress beyond the loose striped leaves.

At the sound of footsteps on the gravel the skirts