‘Oh, Serena! do you hear?’ interrupted Freda, ’there is Miss Nugent in the hall.  Of all the bores! we never can be free from those people.  Yes it is; I hear her lithp;’ and Miss Nugent was announced.

She had walked over, she said, to ask how they all were after the delightful Harvest Home, and to bring an invitation from her mamma to dinner the following Tuesday.

’I do hope you will come, Freda, and you, Mith Hall, and bring that charming Colonel Vaughan with you.  He ith tho nithe.  Don’t you think tho.’

‘Very,’ said Freda, drily.

’But, do you know, I don’t admire him half ath much ath Mr Rowland Prothero.  Mamma thaith he ith tho gentlemanlike and that the meanth to athk him Tuethday.’

‘Really!’ again said Freda, not daring to look at Miss Hall.

’We are going to Llanfach to-morrow to hear him preach.  Hith thermon wath beautiful in the school-room.  Don’t you think he ith like the picture at the beginning of “Evangeline.”  Dear me, who wath he, Freda?’

‘Longfellow, you mean, I suppose.’

’Of courth.  And hith language ith tho poetical.  Mamma thaith the thouldn’t wonder if he turned out a great author by-and-by.  Thould you, Mith Hall?’

’It takes so much to make a great author, dear; but it is just possible.’

‘But not probable,’ whispered Freda.

’Oh, Freda! don’t you like him?  I am thure you ought; he managed everything tho nithely for you yethterday.  Mamma thaith—­Ah! there is Colonel Vaughan coming up the drive.’

Miss Hall looked across at Freda, and remarked that she began to draw most industriously, and did not glance out of the window as Miss Nugent did.

‘Mamma thaith,’ began that young lady, ’that the colonel ith the motht accomplithed and agreeable man in Waleth.’

‘How can she tell that?’ asked Freda, with feigned surprise.  ’There are so many clever men in Wales.  I assure you we are a talented race.’

’I am thure of that, Freda; but I think the Englith are more thinthere; mamma thaith tho.’

‘Ah, she must be a good judge,’ said Freda, somewhat ironically.

‘Yeth; mamma ath theen a great deal of the world,’ replied the unsuspecting Miss Nugent.

Here Colonel Vaughan made his appearance, and that young lady gave him her mamma’s invitation, which he said he should be delighted to accept, if his friends did; so Freda said her papa was out, but she would send Lady Mary Nugent an answer when he came in.

‘Ah! this is a sketch, Freda,’ said Colonel Vaughan, who had somehow returned to the old familiarity of earlier days.  ’How can I thank you sufficiently? who could think that the child I left twelve years ago would be such a good artist when I returned?  But that was the cleverest bit of life-like drawing I ever saw, that sketch of your old pony.  By the way, do you know who this is?’

The colonel opened a sketch-book that he had in his hand, and put it into Freda’s.