o make the move." An ingenuous girlish blush
mantled on her cheek as she looked towards Rosamond and moved.

The drawing-room adjoined the dining-room, and likewise had a glass
door leading into the conservatory; but this, like the other
windows, was concealed by the pale-blue damask curtains that
descended from cornices gilded like the legs of the substantial
chairs and sofas. There was, however, no lack of modern light cane
and basket seats round the fire, and it looked cheery and
comfortable. Rosamond put an arm round Anne's waist--"Poor tired
dear, come and lie on the sofa."

"Oh no, I couldn't. The gentlemen will come in."

"All brothers! What, will you only be satisfied with an easy-chair!
A charming room, and a charming fire!"

"Not so nice as a library," said Cecil, stabbing the fire with the
poker as a sort of act of possession. "We always sit in the library
at Dunstone. State rooms are horrid."

"This only wants to be littered down," said Rosamond. "That's my
first task in fresh quarters, banishing some things and upsetting
the rest, and strewing our own about judiciously. There are the
inevitable wax-flowers. I have regular blarney about their being so
lovely, that it would just go to my heart to expose them to the
boys."

"You have always been on the move," said Cecil, who was standing by
the table examining the ornaments.

"You may say so! there are not many of Her Majesty's garrisons that
I have not had experience of, except my native country that I wasn't
born in. It was very mean of them never once to send us to
Ireland."

"Where were you born?" said Cecil, neither of the two catching at
the bull which perhaps Rosamond had allowed to escape by way of
trying them.

"At Plymouth. Dick and I were both born at Plymouth, and Maurice at
Scutari; then we were in the West Indies; the next two were born all
up and down in Jamaica and all the rest of the Islands--Tom and
Terry--dear boys, I've got the charge of them now they are left at
school. Three more are Canadians; and little Nora is the only
Irish-born one amongst us."

"I thought you said you had never been in Ireland."

"Never quartered there, but on visits at Rathforlane," said
Rosamond. "Our ten years at home we have been up and down the
world, till at last you see I've ended where I began--at Plymouth."

"Oh, what a lovely Florentine mosaic!" exclaimed Cecil, who had
taken but slight interest in this itinerary. "It is jus