ng-room.
This room also was empty, but even as she grasped the fact, Miss
Briskett started with dismay to behold a bareheaded figure leaning over
the garden gate, elbows propped on the topmost bar, and chin supported
on clasped hands. This time she did not pause to determine what
commands she should issue in the future, but stepped hastily down the
path to take immediate and peremptory measures.

"My dear! in the front garden--without a hat--leaning over the gate!
What can you be thinking of? The neighbours might see you!"

Cornelia turned in lazy amusement. "Well, if it's going to be a shock
to them, they might as well begin early, and get it over." She ran a
surprised eye over her aunt's severe attire. "My, Aunt Soph, you look
too good to live! I'm 'most frightened of you in that bonnet. If you'd
given a hoot from the window I'd have hustled up, and not kept you
waiting. Just hang on two shakes while I get my hat. I won't stay to
prink!"

"I am not accustomed--" began Miss Briskett, automatically, but she
spoke to thin air. Cornelia had flown up the path in a cloud of
swirling skirts; cries of "Mury! Mury!" sounded from within, and the
mistress of the house slowly retraced her steps and seated herself to
await the next appearance of the whirlwind with what patience she could
command.

It was long in coming. The clock ticked a slow quarter of an hour, and
was approaching twenty minutes, when footsteps sounded once more, and
Cornelia appeared in the doorway. She had not changed her dress, she
had not donned her jacket; her long, white gloves dangled from her hand;
to judge from appearances she had spent a solid twenty minutes in
putting on a tip-tilted hat which had been trimmed with bows of dainty
flowered ribbon, on the principle of the more the merrier. Miss
Briskett disapproved of the hat. It dipped over the forehead, giving an
obviously artificial air of demureness to the features; it tilted up at
the back, revealing the objectionable hair in all its wanton profusion.
It looked--_odd_, and if there was one thing more than another to which
Norton objected, it was a garment which differentiated itself from its
fellows.

Aunt and niece walked down the path together in the direction of the
South Lodge, the latter putting innumerable questions, to which the
former replied in shocked surprise. "What were those gardens across the
road?"--They were private property of householders in the Park.--"Did