residence, which she called the Ridge House.  She was going there direct after reaching New York, and thither numerous boxes had preceded her, containing pictures and statuary and other trophies of her travels abroad, and Daisy, whose exquisite taste she knew and appreciated, was to help her arrange the new things, and then “she’d give a smasher of a party,” she said, as she sat in her garden-chair and talked of the surprise and happiness in store for the Ridgevillians when she issued cards for her garden party.

“I sha’n’t slight nobody at all edible to society,” she said, “for I don’t believe in that.  I shall have Miss Lucy Grey, of course, from Grey’s Park, for she is the cream-dilly-cream of Allington, she and your Aunt, Miss McPherson,” turning to Daisy, “and mebby I shall ask Hanner Jerrold, though she never goes anywheres—­that’s Grey’s aunt,” and now she nodded to Bessie, who at the mention of the name Jerrold, evinced a little interest in what the lady was saying.

Turning to Augusta, who was eating her strawberries and cream in silence, with a look of vexation on her face as her mother floundered on, she said: 

“I think you told me you knew Mr. Grey Jerrold?”

“Yes,” Augusta replied, “that is, he once spent a summer in Allington and I went to the same school with him; since then we have met several times in Allington and two or three times here.  Still, I really know very little of him.”

“Who’s that you know very little of—­Grey Jerrold?” Mrs. Browne chimed in.  “Well, I call that droll.  Have you forgot how often he used to come home from school with you, and how he fished you out of the pond that time you fell in?  Why, he was that free at our house, that he used always to ask for something to eat, and would often add on, ’something baked to day.’  You see, he didn’t like dry victuals, such as his Aunt Hannah gave him.  She is tight as the bark of a tree, and queer too, with it all.”

It grated on Bessie’s nerves to hear Mrs. Browne speak of Grey as if she were his equal, and recognized as such at home, and she was glad when Augusta said, quietly: 

“But, mother, I was a little girl then, six or seven years old, and Grey felt at home at our house because—­”

She did not finish the sentence, as she had evidently struck against a reef which her mother overleaped by saying: 

“Yes, I know, Grey was always a nice boy, and not one bit stuck up like his proud mother.  I hate Geraldine Grey; yes, I do!” and Mrs. Browne manifested the first sign of unamiability which Daisy had ever seen in her.  But Daisy, who remembered perfectly the haughty woman she had met at Penrhyn Park years before, hated her, too, and so there was accord between her and her guest.

“Mr. Jerrold told me of his aunt who lives in the pasture, and whom he loves very much.  Do you know her?” Bessie asked, and Mrs. Browne replied: