one of has beautiful hands, he cried out, “No fellow can read badgered like this.  There’s a regular brute of a fly that has been lighting on my nose every half-second since I sat down,” closed the book, smiled, and said, “I may as well call upon Mr. Brown while I have time,” and took himself off.  This happened on the ninth day after his arrival, and with it began a new era in his existence.  He not only went to Mr. Brown’s that day, but the next, and the day after that.  In short, he had found an amusement best expressed in the French equivalent distraction.  He rode with Bijou, and reported to Mr. Heathcote that she was “a clinker at her fences, and went at them as straight as an English girl.”  He taught her a good deal about the management of her reins and animal, and admitted that she was “a plucky one.”  If she had only consented to get an English saddle (which she declined to do, with one of her customary exaggerations, saying that she “didn’t want a thousand pommels"), to rise in that saddle, and to have the tail of her horse cropped properly, he would have been quite happy.  As it was, he acknowledged that in her own fashion she was a most graceful and fearless horsewoman, and approved of her accordingly.  It soon struck him that she did other things well.  Used to the reserved and rather constrained manner of most English girls, he found a great charm in her bright gayety, her frank cordiality, the good-humored comradeship and absence of stiffness, untainted by vulgarity.  For, although Bijou was not high-bred, distinguished, or clever, she was a girl of real refinement, and he had the wit to see it.  Her merry tongue and generous and affectionate heart, neither chilled nor hardened yet by contact with the world, were very attractive, and it is just possible that he felt the influence of her piquantly-pretty face.  At any rate, he had found a great number of imperative reasons for going to Brown’s, when one morning, as he was opening the little wicket-gate that admitted him to their croquet-field, he saw something that gave him an unpleasant shock.  It was a buggy in front of the door, in which sat Bijou, charmingly arrayed, smiling upon a gentleman who had just helped her in and was only deterred from taking the seat waiting for him by her calling out, “Stop, till I fix my skirts and put up my parasol,” the gentleman being his cousin, Mr. Edward Plummer, alias Drummond.  The sight of Mr. Plummer enraged him.  Bijou’s cheerful air did not improve matters, and for the first time he felt irritated at her American speech and accent. “‘Fix my skirts,’” he quoted discontentedly, as he watched them drive off, and then, after a moment’s indecision, he stalked angrily up to the front door, pulled the bell fiercely, and asked to see Mr. Brown.  He was almost immediately ushered into the library, where Mr. Brown was sitting.

“Good-morning, sir.  I am glad to see you.  I am sorry to say that Bijou is out.  She has gone driving with our guest:  an English guest, by the way, —­Mr. Drummond.  He came on with us from New York, and has been here ever since, except the last two weeks, which he has spent in Chicago,” said Mr. Brown.