When the door bell rang Freda rose to leave the room.

‘If you please, Freda, remain where you are, I would very much rather.’

Freda resumed her seat, and shortly after Mr Jones was announced.

‘Quite an old man; twice as old as Nita,’ was Freda’s first thought as she looked at him.

Miss Hall rose and advanced to meet Mr Jones.  They shook hands, Freda thought, very much like other people, and then Miss Hall introduced her, and Mr Jones bowed.

’I promised your sister to come and see you, Miss Hall, when I came down into Wales,’ he said after he was duly seated.

‘I am very much obliged to you, it was very kind,’ was the reply.

Freda saw that they were both as nervous and shy as a couple of children, and came to the rescue by apologising for her father’s unavoidable absence, he having gone to a neighbouring tenant’s, and by saying that he would be at home at luncheon.

By degrees they all three got into conversation, and Mr Jones gave Miss Hall an account of her sister and her family.  One little girl was very like Miss Hall, and she was the general favourite.’

‘I am sure she must be very pretty,’ suggested Freda.

‘Very,’ said Mr Jones, with a smile at Freda, of greater archness than she gave him credit for.

‘Don’t you think Miss Hall very little altered?’ she asked again.

’I think I should have known her anywhere, though I passed her in the twilight, uncertain who she was.’

A long conversation followed upon various general topics, until the luncheon bell rang.  As no Mr Gwynne appeared, Freda was obliged to make another excuse for him; but Mr Jones seemed perfectly satisfied without him, if not relieved by his non-appearance.

Freda proposed a walk as soon as luncheon was over, and she and Miss Hall took their guest to see the school, which Freda was careful to say was under Miss Hall’s superintendence.  Then they pioneered him to various points of view, which he seemed to look upon with the eye of a real lover of the beauties of nature; and finally they rested on a rustic seat at the top of a wooded hill, whence they looked down on the magnificent valley beneath, with its green meadows, winding river, and boundary of distant mountains.

Alter Freda had remained here a few minutes, she suddenly said,—­

’Would you mind my just running down to Mrs Prothero’s to settle with her about Gladys?  I am sure we shall none of us be happy until that matter is arranged.  If you will go down through the wood, Nita, I will join you at the waterfall, or somewhere else, in less than a quarter of an hour.  Will you excuse me, Mr Jones?’

‘Certainly,’ was the reply.

‘But had we not better all go?’ asked Miss Hall, casting an entreating glance upon Freda, who, however, would not see it.

’I think not.  Mrs Prothero is so nervous that we should frighten her to death.  It will take me five minutes to run down the hill, five minutes to say my say, and five to get to the waterfall.  But you need not hurry away, as I can wait for you; or, if you are not there, I will find you.  Come, Frisk, come with me.’