npronounceable place.

She replied briefly that she did not know. Her grandfathers on both
sides had been farmers.

The gentleman bowed with the smiling unconcern of one to whom pedigree
is a matter of course.

"I have heard often of your father," he said. "He is one of the local
supports of the party to which I have the honour to belong. He
represents one great section of our retainers, our host another. I am
glad to see such friendship between the two." And he smiled elaborately
from Alice to Lord Manorwater.

Alice was uncomfortable. She felt she must be sitting beside some very
great man, and she was tortured by vain efforts to remember the
monosyllable which had stood for his name. She did not like his voice,
and, great man or not, she resented the obvious patronage. He spoke
with a touch of the drawl which is currently supposed to belong only to
the half-educated classes of England.

She turned to the boy who sat on the other side of her. The young
gentleman--his name was Arthur and, apparently, nothing else--was only
too ready to talk. He proceeded to explain, compendiously, his doings of
the past week, to which the girl listened politely. Then anxiety got
the upper hand, and she asked in a whisper, _a propos_ of nothing in
particular, the name of her left-hand neighbour.

"They call him Stocks," said the boy, delighted at the tone of
confidence, and was going on to sketch the character of the gentleman in
question when Alice cut him short.

"Will you take me to fish some day?" she asked.

"Any day," gasped the hilarious Arthur. "I'm ready, and I'll tell you
what, I know the very burn--" and he babbled on happily till he saw that
Miss Wishart had ceased to listen. It was the first time a pretty girl
had shown herself desirous of his company, and he was intoxicated with
the thought.

But Alice felt that she was in some way bound to make the most of Mr.
Stocks, and she set herself heroically to the task. She had never heard
of him, but then she was not well versed in the minutiae of things
political, and he clearly was a politician. Doubtless to her father his
name was a household word. So she spoke to him of Glenavelin and its
beauties.

He asked her if she had seen Royston Castle, the residence of his friend
the Duke of Sanctamund. When he had stayed there he had been much
impressed--

Then she spoke wildly of anything, of books and pictures and
people and politics. She found him well-informed, cle