own the
stairs. He hated every glance of her black eyes and every attitude and
movement of her plump little body. More than all he hated the touch of
her soft arms as they stirred against him at the tightly packed
dinner-table. Therefore he avoided the dinner-table, and the
drawing-room; he avoided as far as possible the house, filled as it
was with the disastrous presence. He fatigued himself with excesses of
walking and cycling, in the hope that when he flung himself into his
bed at midnight he would be too tired to feel. And sometimes he was.

At last poor Flossie, weary of conjecture, unbent so far as to seek
counsel of Miss Bishop. For Miss Bishop gave you to understand that on
the subject of "gentlemen" there was nothing that she did not know. It
was a little humiliating, for only a month ago Flossie had said to her
in strictest confidence, "I feel it in my bones, Ada, that he's going
to come forward this spring."

Ada laughed coarsely, but not unkindly, at the tale of her perplexity.
Ada had every reason to be sympathetic; for Mr. Rickman once securely
attached, Mr. Spinks would be lonely, unappropriated, free. "Don't you
worry," said she, "_he's_ all right."

"All right? Can't you see how frightfully rude he is to me?"

"I should think I did see it. A jolly lot you know about gentlemen.
You've nothing to go on when they're so everlastingly polite, but when
they turn mad like that all of a sudden, you may be sure they're
coming to the point. To tell you the truth, I didn't use to think
you'd very much chance, Flossie; but when I saw him walk out of the
room the other day, I said to myself, 'She's got 'im!'"

"I wish I knew. I don't want it hanging on for ever."

"It won't. If he doesn't propose in May, he will in June, when you've
got a new dress and a new hat."

Flossie shook her head despairingly. "I wonder," said she, "what I'd
really better do. I think sometimes I'd better go away."

"Well, sometimes that _does_ fetch them; and then, again, sometimes it
doesn't. It's risky. Some girls," she added reflectively, "try doing
their hair another way; but I wouldn't, if I was you. That's risky,
too. If they're really fond of you, as often as not it only puts them
off."

"Then what _am_ I to do?"

"If you take my advice," said Miss Bishop, "you'll not do anything.
You'll just go on the same as before, as if you hadn't noticed
anything out of the way."

And Flossie went on just the same as before, with t