whom she bent a
curious glance: she had half expected to see him turn aside and dive
through the doorway at the sight of herself, yet there he stood as calm
and unashamed as possible.

He took her hand and held it in a pleasant grasp. He looked down at her
in the half-fatherly, bantering fashion he adopted to the "ducky little
girls."

"Well," he said, "and how is the poor little pen?"

Miss Bibby shot one keen glance at him.

He decided that she did not like the slighting reference to that pen and
strove to rectify his mistake. "You know, however good an instrument it
is, I don't like to see it in a woman's hand," he went on, "it's an
edged weapon and cuts into even the hard hand that holds it; your little
hand would bleed if you grasped it perpetually. I better like to think
of it smoothing these little heads."

He looked--he knew not why himself--half sadly at the eager children.

"Isn't he an anachronism?" laughed Kate, "I often tell him the reason he
has not married is he has never been able to find any one sufficiently
Early Victorian for him. Imagine preaching a doctrine of 'Thou shalt not
write' to women to-day! Every woman her own authoress is the accepted
thing."

"Ah well," said Hugh, "I know a better thing." But though Kate pressed
him he might not tell to these two spinsters that "Every woman a
mother" was in his thoughts.

"I will say good-night," said Miss Bibby, "come children--at once, if
you please." She shook hands with Kate and this time only bowed to Hugh.

"Did you give her her present?" asked Kate when the gate closed and the
grey figure and the little running ones were merged in the grey of the
tender dusk.

"No," said Hugh, "I'll have to find a better chance; I evidently put my
foot in it, didn't I?" He pondered over the keen eye-glance that had met
his once or twice.

"I tell you what it is, Kate," he said, when, his cigar finished, they
went into the house, "that girl will never really forgive me for the
interview, however much she may think she does."

CHAPTER XXIII

THE PICNIC AT THE FALLS

The morning rose in mist; the sun moved upwards and still the mist
lingered, as if anxious to drape and hide the rough edges of this
oddly-arranged picnic.

Sometimes the wagonette in front was lost to sight by a rolling curtain
of gauze; sometimes a wind swept the road clear and then the children
waved hats and kissed hands to each other.

Dora and Beatrice were visions of b