“He is not much altered,” said Hester.

“He is the kind of man that would not alter much,” said Dick.  “I expect God Almighty likes him as he is.”

Mr. and Mrs. Gresley, meanwhile, were receiving Mrs. Pratt and the two Misses Pratt in the drawing-room.  Selina and Ada Pratt were fine, handsome young women, with long upper lips, who wore their smart sailor hats tilted backwards to show their bushy fringes, and whose muff-chains, with swinging pendent hearts, silk blouses and sequin belts and brown boots represented to Mrs. Gresley the highest pinnacle of the world of fashion.

Selina was the most popular, being liable to shrieks of laughter at the smallest witticisms, and always ready for that species of amusement termed “bally-ragging” or “hay-making.”  But Ada was the most admired.  She belonged to that type which in hotel society and country towns is always termed “queenly.”  She “kept the men at a distance.”  She “never allowed them to take liberties,” etc., etc.  She held her chin up and her elbows out, and was considered by the section of Middleshire society in which she shone to be very distinguished.  Mrs. Pratt was often told that her daughter looked like a duchess; and this facsimile of the aristocracy, or rather of the most distressing traits of its latest recruits, had a manner of lolling with crossed legs in the parental carriage and pair which was greatly admired.  “Looks as if she was born to it all,” Mr. Pratt would say to his wife.

Mrs. Gresley was just beginning to fear her other guests were not coming when two tall figures were seen walking across the lawn, with Hester between them.

Mr. Gresley sallied forth to meet them, and blasts of surprised welcome were borne into the drawing-room by the summer air.

“But it was locked.  I locked it myself.”  Inaudible reply.

“Padlocked.  Only opens to the word Moon.  Key on my own watch-chain.”

Inaudible reply.

“Hinges! ha! ha! ha!  Very good, Dick.  Likely story that.  I see you’re the same as ever.  Travellers’ tales.  But we are not so easily taken in, are we, Hester?”

Mrs. Gresley certainly had the gift of prophecy as far as the Pratts were concerned.  Mrs. Pratt duly took the expected “fancy” to Rachel, and pressed her to stay at “The Towers” while she was in the neighborhood, and make further acquaintance with her “young ladies.”

“Ada is very pernickety,” she said, smiling towards that individual conversing with Dick.  “She won’t make friends with everybody, and she gives it me” (with maternal pride) “when I ask people to stay whom she does not take to.  She says there’s a very poor lot round here, and most of the young ladies so ill-bred and empty she does not care to make friends with them.  I don’t know where she gets all her knowledge from.  I’m sure it’s not from her mother.  Ada, now you come and talk a little to Miss West.”

Ada rose with the air of one who confers a favor, and Rachel made room for her on the sofa, while Mrs. Pratt squeezed herself behind the tea-table with Mrs. Gresley.