e
accent, the manners, and the frank courage of a lady; but those things
could be learned; they were got up for the stage every day.

Verrian was roused from the muse he found he had fallen into by hearing
Mrs. Stager ask, "Won't you have some more coffee?"

"No, thank you," he said. And now he rose from the table, on which he
dreamily dropped his napkin, and got his hat and coat and went out for a
walk. He had not studied the art of fiction so long, in the many private
failures that had preceded his one public success, without being made
to observe that life sometimes dealt in the accidents and coincidences
which his criticism condemned as too habitually the resource of the
novelist. Hitherto he had disdained them for this reason; but since his
serial story was off his hands, and he was beginning to look about him
for fresh material, he had doubted more than once whether his severity
was not the effect of an unjustifiable prejudice.

It struck him now, in turning the corner of the woodlot above the meadow
where the snow-battle had taken place, and suddenly finding himself face
to face with Miss Shirley, that nature was in one of her uninventive
moods and was helping herself out from the old stock-in-trade of
fiction. All the same, he felt a glow of pleasure, which was also a glow
of pity; for while Miss Shirley looked, as always, interesting, she look
tired, too, with a sort of desperate air which did not otherwise account
for itself. She had given, at sight of him, a little start, and a little
"Oh!" dropped from her lips, as if it had been jostled from them. She
made haste to go on, with something like the voluntary hardiness of the
courage that plucks itself from the primary emotion of fear, "You are
going down to try the skating?"

"Do I look it, without skates?"

"You may be going to try the sliding," she returned. "I'm afraid there
won't be much of either for long. This soft air is going to make havoc
of my plans for to-morrow."

"That's too bad of it. Why not hope for a hard freeze to-night? You
might as well. The weather has been known to change its mind. You might
even change your plans."

"No, I can't do that. I can't think of anything else. It's to bridge
over the day that's left before Seeing Ghosts. If it does freeze, you'll
come to Mrs. Westangle's afternoon tea on the pond?"

"I certainly shall. How is it to be worked?"

"She's to have her table on a platform, with runners, in a bower of
evergr