d away out of the room.

"It's my belief she's in love with 'im, and p'raps they've 'ad a
quarrel," said Anna, who was aching in this quiet country place for a
spice of adventure. Miss Bibby had not noticed that the girl had come
into the room at Max's request with "more lawberry leserve."

The little girls looked at each other with sparkling eyes. They loved a
mystery as much as Anna did.

"Oh," said Pauline, "won't it be lovely? Let's go and watch at the
gate."

They flew off to stare at "Tenby"--"Tenby" with the local charwoman
already there, throwing up the windows and sweeping away the dust of the
winter.

CHAPTER IV

THE FAMOUS NOVELIST

It was very early morning, seven o'clock perhaps, and Hugh Kinross, the
famous novelist, sat in a camp chair at "Tenby," his feet on the
verandah rail, and marvelled at his fame.

It was not his custom to rise quite so early to do this, but
circumstances over which he alone had any control, namely the mountain
fly, had driven him out of bed. There are no mosquitoes on the
mountains; consequently many householders will not go to the expense of
mosquito nets.

But the mountain fly rises earlier than any other fly extant, and the
stranger who is not provided with a guardian net, leaping desperately up
with it, has the early-rising virtue forcibly thrust upon him.

Later in the day, his wrath forgotten, the novelist writes to his city
friends and boasts of the light atmosphere of the mountains, as if he
had had something to do with the manufacture of it.

"I actually find myself rising at six," he writes, "simply to get out
into the delicious air." And not one mention does he make of the debt he
owes to the fly.

Hugh Kinross had been routed out at six and, his first choler spent, was
quite pleased with himself. He discovered a path leading to a gully, and
in the gully a pool beneath a fall, and here he had a circumscribed but
delightful swim. Then he climbed up the gully side again, and the
Lomaxes' home caught his eye, and so pleased the artistic side of him
that he leaned over one of its hedges to gaze at it.

And "Greenways" in the clear morning air, nestling in its setting of
tender green, splashed everywhere with the light tints of
flowers,--"Greenways," with its eyes turned to the mountain where the
marvellous morning lay in the first fresh indescribable blueness that
creeps there after the pinks and purples and yellows of the
dawn,--"Greenways," with