The boy and girl shook hands with each other.  She was the first to speak.

“So you are Ralph.  I have been wondering what you would be like.  Uncle has been telling me you were coming.  I like your looks, and I think you are nice.”

Ralph was taken rather aback.  This was not the way in which his schoolfellows’ sisters had generally addressed him.

“I think you look jolly,” he said; “and that’s better than looking nice.”

“I think they mean the same thing,” she replied; “except that a girl says ‘nice’ and a boy says ‘jolly.’  I like the word ‘jolly’ best, only I get scolded when I use it.  Shall we go into the garden?”

Altogether Ralph Conway had a very much pleasanter time than he had anticipated.  Except at meals he saw little of the Miss Penfolds.  His opinion as to these ladies, expressed confidentially to Mabel Withers, was the reverse of flattering.

“I think,” he said, “that they are the two most disagreeable old cats I have ever met.  They hardly ever open their lips, and when they do it is only to answer some question of their brother.  I remember in a fairy story there was a girl who whenever she spoke let fall pearls and diamonds from her lips; whenever those women open their mouths I expect icicles and daggers to drop out.”

“They are not so bad as that,” Mabel laughed.  “I generally get on with them very well, and they are very kind in the parish; and altogether they are really not bad.”

“Then their looks belie them horribly,” Ralph said.  “I suppose they don’t like me; and that would be all well enough if I had done anything to offend them, but it was just as bad the first day I came.  I am sure Mr. Penfold does not like it.  I can see him fidget on his chair; and he talks away with me pretty well all the time we are at table, so as to make it less awkward, I suppose.  Well, I am stopping with him, and not with them, that’s one thing; and it doesn’t make much difference to me if they do choose to be disagreeable.  I like him immensely.  He is wonderfully kind; but it would be awfully stupid work if it weren’t for you, Mabel.  I don’t think I could stand it if it were not for our rides together.”

The young people had indeed got on capitally from the first.  Every day they took long rides together, generally alone, although sometimes Mr. Penfold rode with them.  Ralph had already confided to the latter, upon his asking him how he liked Mabel, that she was the jolliest girl that he had ever met.

“She has no nonsensical girl’s ways about her, Mr. Penfold; but is almost as good as a boy to be with.  The girls I have seen before have been quite different from that.  Some of them always giggle when you speak to them, others have not got a word to say for themselves; and it is awfully hard work talking to them even for a single dance.  Still, I like them better than the giggling ones.”