“Well, Cherry, I saw no great harm in it after all, and Francie looked sweetly pretty, just as poor Alda did when she first came to us.  Lance must make his own excuses to Alda.  But Gerald looked horridly ill!  He sang very well, but he had such red spots on his cheeks!  I’d get Clement’s doctor to sound him.  Lord Rotherwood was quite complimentary.  Now I must go and buy something—-I hear there is the Dirty Boy-—I think I shall get it for Fernan’s new baths and wash-houses.  Then isn’t there something of yours, Cherry?”

“Not to compete with the Dirty Boy.”

“Ah! now you are laughing at me, Cherry.  Quite right, I am glad to hear you do it again.”

The next visitor was Lance.

“Oh, Cherry, how cool you look!  Give me a cup of tea-—not refreshment-stall tea.  That’s right.  Little Francie is a perfect gem-—looks and voice—-not acting-—no time for that.  Heigh-ho!”

“Where’s Gerald?”

“Somewhere about after that Merrifield niece with the doleful name, I fancy.  He did very well when it came to the scratch.”

“Have you seen Dr. Brownlow?  He has been to see Clement.”

“That’s first-rate!  Where shall I find him?”

“Somewhere about, according to your lucid direction, I suppose.”

“What does he think of old Tina?”

Geraldine told him, and was rather surprised, when he whistled as though perplexed, and as Fergus rushed in, glorious with the news that Sir Ferdinand had bought his collection of specimens for the Bexley museum, he rose up, looking perturbed, to find Dr. Brownlow.

Next came Gillian with news that the Dirty Boy was sold to Lady Travis Underwood.

“And mayn’t I stay a moment or two?” said she.  “Now the masque is over, that Captain Armytage is besetting me again.”

“Poor Captain Armytage.”

“Why do you pity him?  He is going to join his ship, the Sparrow Hawk, next week, and that ought to content him.”

“Ships do not always fill a man’s heart.”

“Then they ought.  I don’t like it,” she added, in a petulant tone.  “I have so much to learn and to do, I don’t want to be tormented about a tiresome man.”

“Well, he will be out of your way to-morrow.”

“Geraldine, that is a horrid tone.”

“If you choose to put meaning in it, I cannot help it.”

“And that horrid little Maura!  She is in the most awful flutter, standing on tiptoe, and craning out her foolish little neck.  I know it is all after Ivinghoe, and he never has come to our counter!  Kalliope has been trying to keep her in order, but I’m sure the Queen of the White Ants must have been just like that when she got poor Captain White to marry her.  Kalliope is so much vexed, I can see.  She never meant to have her here.  And Aunt Ada stayed away on purpose.”

“Has she seen much of him?”

“Hardly anything; but he did admire her, and she never was like Kalliope.  But what would Aunt Ada do?  Oh dear! there’s that man!  He has no business at Aunt Jane’s charity stall.  I shall go and tell him so.”