After a while, the others tried to bring her into the conversation by appeals to her opinion, but Coey was not to be so easily propitiated, and returned austere answers.

Then Bernard, thinking he might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, became all the more engrossed with his captivator, and it was in at one of strong discontent that he exclaimed, as they were returning,—­“Why, there’s Alec and Janet Cameron coming down to the house!”

Their unexpected arrival was rather a relief to the Palmer girls, Bluebell only saw more mischief before her, but Bernard’s impatience at the sight of Alec whose motive for coming he easily guessed, was quite undisguised.

The latter accounted for himself by saying “that Janet wished to make Miss Rolleston’s acquaintance, and, therefore, he had accompanied her.”

“Oh, I am not Miss Rolleston,” said Bluebell, “I am the governess.”

“I have had the advantage of seeing the governess,” said Alec, demurely, “and she is old enough to be your mother.”

“But I am the musical one and Freddy is my pupil entirely.”

“Are you really?” said he, brightening “Then you like music?”

“I am sure that is not a necessary consequence,” said Bluebell, rather mystified by the meaning tone of his voice, but Alec, believing she had heard his nocturnal serenade and assuming a secret understanding on the strength of it, lingered by her side talking in an undertone—­really about nothing in particular, for, like most spoony boys, he trusted more to his eyes than his tongue.  Still it had all the effect of a flirtation, and when the girls went upstairs to prepare for tea, Bluebell found herself quite out of court without the support of the other sex.  Coey was already turned into a very belligerent little ring-dove, and Janet watched her askance, for she had never before known Alec so keen about partaking of tea at Palmer’s Landing.  Crickey, whose feelings were not so powerfully engaged, supplied her with toilette requisites, and such conversation as hospitality demanded.

Bluebell was rather flattered by the apprehension she excited, and, with mischievous ostentation, produced from her pocket a weapon of war in the shape of a blue ribbon, and began weaving it into her chestnut fuzz, too naturally wavy and long to require frizettes.  Coey, who was rather pretty in the white kitten style, had sparse pale hair, never properly combed over her “water fall,” as she called it, which obtruded itself like a crow’s nest.  This attractive peculiarity was more apparent than ever to-day, the frizette having been caught by a bough in the woods.

Bluebell observed that her decorative preparations were restricted to a dab of violet-powder on her nose, and a slight application of lip-salve.  “I can’t let her go down such a figure,” thought she, “though she is dreadfully angry with me,” and, seizing a comb, began silently to effect a reformation in Coey’s chevelure.