on which they
should rejoice together.

"It is bound to leak out sooner or later," Susan Fossett was convinced,
"so I may as well tell you: that gaby Mary Ramsbotham has got herself
engaged."

"Nonsense!" was Peter Hope's involuntary ejaculation.

"Precisely what I mean to tell her the very next time I see her," added
Susan.

"Who to?" demanded Tommy.

"You mean 'to whom.' The preeposition governs the objective case,"
corrected her James Douglas McTear, commonly called "The Wee Laddie," who
himself wrote English better than he spoke it.

"I meant 'to whom,'" explained Tommy.

"Ye didna say it," persisted the Wee Laddie.

"I don't know to whom," replied Miss Ramsbotham's bosom friend, sipping
tea and breathing indignation. "To something idiotic and incongruous
that will make her life a misery to her."

Somerville, the briefless, held that in the absence of all data such
conclusion was unjustifiable.

"If it had been to anything sensible," was Miss Fossett's opinion, "she
would not have kept me in the dark about it, to spring it upon me like a
bombshell. I've never had so much as a hint from her until I received
this absurd scrawl an hour ago."

Miss Fossett produced from her bag a letter written in pencil.

"There can be no harm in your hearing it," was Miss Fossett's excuse; "it
will give you an idea of the state of the poor thing's mind."

The tea-drinkers left their cups and gathered round her. "Dear Susan,"
read Miss Fossett, "I shall not be able to be with you to-morrow. Please
get me out of it nicely. I can't remember at the moment what it is.
You'll be surprised to hear that I'm _engaged_--to be married, I mean, I
can hardly _realise_ it. I hardly seem to know where I am. Have just
made up my mind to run down to Yorkshire and see grandmamma. I must do
_something_. I must _talk_ to _somebody_ and--forgive me, dear--but you
_are_ so sensible, and just now--well I don't _feel_ sensible. Will tell
you all about it when I see you--next week, perhaps. You must _try_ to
like him. He is _so_ handsome and _really_ clever--in his own way. Don't
scold me. I never thought it possible that _anyone_ could be so happy.
It's quite a different sort of happiness to _any_ other sort of
happiness. I don't know how to describe it. Please ask Burcot to let me
off the antequarian congress. I feel I should do it badly. I am so
thankful he has _no_ relatives--in England. I should have been so
_terribl