put him on the path whereon he should walk, and another
with his eyes, mutely inviting her to stay and flirt with him the while
he pretended to listen--then her pride was roused, and she determined to
teach him a wholesome lesson. She waited until Miss Munns had produced
half a dozen ledgers to demonstrate the elaborate system of book-keeping
by which she conducted her miniature establishment--until Jack had
seated himself by her side and was irrevocably victimised for the
evening; then she rose from her chair and said amiably--

"I mustn't disturb you. You will like to be quiet, so I'll run across
and chat to Bridgie for an hour, while you are away!"

The "running" was a polite fiction, for in spite of massage and the most
careful doctoring it would be many months before Sylvia could run again.
By walking very deliberately she could just conceal her limp, and now
as she turned towards the door she had a good view of Jack's petrified
glare of disgust.

The picture of him sitting by the old lady's side, while she prepared to
teach him what he himself knew a dozen times better than herself, was
too much for Sylvia's composure, and around the corner of the door,
where her aunt could not see her, she doubled up with silent laughter
and cast on him a glance of such mocking triumph, such sparkling,
dimpling, deliciously girl-like derision, as was more eloquent than a
thousand gibes.

Jack leapt to his feet; at that moment he would have given half he
possessed to have rushed after the tantalising creature, to have stood
over her, and watched her self-confidence give place gradually to
embarrassment, and the pink flush rise to the pale cheeks as it had a
trick of doing under his scrutiny, but, alas! the door was shut, and
Miss Munns's voice inquired soberly--

"Do you want the lamp? Put it on the mat, please. You can't be too
careful of lamps. If the oil gets on the cloth, nothing will take it
out!"

"'Twill be a lesson to me while I live!" sighed Jack sorrowfully to
himself. He was smarting with annoyance and impatience, but he managed,
as not one man in a hundred could have done, to keep his irritation to
himself, and be absolutely amiable and courteous to his instructress.
Miss Munns thought him a most well-disposed young man, and did not
discover one of the anxious glances at the clock, nor the yawns so
dexterously hidden beneath strokings of the moustache.

When three-quarters of an hour had passed by, Jack f