Mrs Martin moved aside, and once more Annie pursued her way up the dusty road. The postern door presented no hindrance when she reached it, and by-and-by, with a sigh of relief, she found herself in the cool shade of the grounds. How inviting looked that hammock under the trees! But she had not a moment of time to indulge in rest just then. Unperceived by any one, she managed to reach her room. She locked the door. She made a quick selection from poor Susan’s verses. She then calmly dressed, washed her face and hands, and when early dinner was announced, took her place at table.

The girls were all pleased to see her, and when she assured them that she was as well as ever they all congratulated her. Priscilla Weir sat at table near Annie. Priscilla was not looking well. The headache which Annie pretended to have was in reality possessed by poor Priscilla. She was easily startled, too, and changed colour when any one addressed her in a hurry.

Towards the end of the meal, as the girls were about to leave the room, she bent towards Annie and said:

“Is it really true that Mabel Lushington is going to read some poems at four o’clock this afternoon?”

“She is going to read some of her own poems. Why not?” said Annie. She spoke defiantly.

“Her own poems?” echoed Priscilla, a world of scorn in her voice.

“Yes. Why not?” said Annie.

Priscilla was silent for a minute. Then she said in a very low voice:

“I know how clever you are; but even your genius cannot rise to this. I have seen you struggle to make even the slightest rhyme when we have been playing at making up verses. You can’t manage this.”

“Never mind,” said Annie. She jumped up almost rudely. The next minute she had seized Mabel by the arm. “We have half-an-hour. Come with me at once to my room.”

Mabel did so. When they reached the room Annie locked the door.

“Now then,” she said, “who’s a genius? I said I would find a way out. Sit down immediately before my desk and write what I tell you.”

“Oh Annie, what do you mean?”

“I mean exactly what I say, and the fewer questions you ask the better. I will dictate the poem, and you shall copy it.”

“But – but,” said Mabel, turning from red to white – “it isn’t, I hope, from a printed book. I have thought of that I have been so frightfully miserable that I’ve thought of everything; but that would be so terribly unsafe.”

“This is not unsafe at any rate,” said Annie, “Now you begin. Write what I tell you.”

Annie’s look of triumph and her absolutely fearless manner impressed Mabel. She wrote as best she could to Annie’s dictation, and soon two of poor Susan Martin’s attempts at verse were copied in Mabel’s writing.

“There you are!” said Annie. “That ‘sunset’ one will take the cake, and that pretty little one about ‘my favourite cat’ will come home to every one.”

“But I haven’t a favourite cat,” said Mabel, “and why ever should I write about it?”

“Did you never in the whole course of your life,” was Annie’s answer, “hear of a poet’s licence? You can write on anything, you know, if you are a poet.”

“Can I?” replied Mabel. “Then I suppose the cat will do.”

“It will do admirably.”

“I hope,” said Mabel, “they won’t question me afterwards about the animal. It sounds exactly as though it were my own cat, and every one in the school knows that I can’t even touch a cat.”

“What a pity you didn’t tell me that before,” said Annie, “and I would have chosen something else! But there’s no time now; we must fly downstairs immediately.”

“You are clever, Annie. I can’t think how you got these poems. But the ‘sunset’ one sounds dreadful too. I never even looked at a sunset. And then there’s the thoughts about dying – as if – as if I could know anything of that.”

“You must read them as pathetically as you can,” said Annie, “and make the best of a bad job. I believe they’ll go down admirably. Now then, fold them up and put them away; and don’t let’s be found closeted together here.” Sharp at four that afternoon Mabel appeared before her assembled schoolfellows and read – it must be owned rather badly – first some “Lines to a Favourite Cat,” and then “Thoughts on the Sunset.” The poems were not poetry in any sense of the word; nevertheless, there was a vague sort of far-off suggestion of poetry about them. It is true the girls giggled at the thought of Mabel and her cat, and were not specially impressed by the violet and rose tints of the sunset, or by the fact that florid, large, essentially living-looking Mabel should talk of her last faint breath, and of the time when she lay pale and still and was a corse.

She read the lines, however, and they seemed thoroughly genuine. When she had finished she looked at her companions.

“Well, I’d like to say, ‘I’m blowed!’” said Agnes; while Constance Smedley, the head-girl of the school, said in a low tone:

“I congratulate you, Mabel; and I’m very much surprised. There is no saying what you will do in the future, only I hope you won’t speak of dead people as corses, for I dislike the term.”

“And of course after this,” said a merry, round-faced girl who had hitherto not spoken, “we will expect to have further lines on pussie, poor, pussie; and, oh, Mabel, what a cheat you are! And you always said you loathed cats!”

At this instant one of the youngest girls in the school rushed up and flung a tabby-cat into Mabel’s lap. The cat was large; a very rough specimen of the race. Being angry at such treatment, it unsheathed all its claws. Mabel shrieked with terror, and flung the poor animal aside with great vehemence.

“Oh, poor pussie, poor pussie!” laughed the others; “but she loves you all the same.

“When pussy comes, so sleek and warm,
And rubs against my knee,
I think we’re safe from every harm,
My pretty cat and me.

“Oh Mabel, Mabel! you are a humbug.”

“I hate cats!” burst from Mabel.

Annie turned pale for a minute; but her self-composure did not long desert her. “Being a poet, you know, you’re quite certain to be a little mad at times,” she remarked. “All poets are. I suppose you had a mad fit, dear Mabel, when you wrote about your favourite cat. I thought so.”

“I think so, and I think I am mad now,” said Mabel, marching away from the others as she spoke, and plunging into the cool depths of the paddock.

At that moment, more than cats, she hated herself; she hated Annie; she hated Priscilla. What an awful tissue of lies she was weaving round herself! Surely another year at Mrs Lyttelton’s school would have been much better than this. But, alas! it is not given to us to retrace our steps. Mabel had taken up a position, and there was nothing for it now but to abide by it. To confess all that she had done, to demand the money back from Priscilla, to stay on at school, were greater feats than she had courage to perform; and even if she were willing to do this, was not Annie always by her side – Annie, who did not repent, who was feathering her own nest so nicely, and who was priding herself on having overcome the immense difficulty of proving poor, stupid Mabel a poet?

The great day of the prize-giving followed soon after, and, to the unbounded astonishment of the girls, Mabel Lushington’s essay on “Idealism” won the first literature prize.

The essays were not read by the girls themselves, but by one of the teachers who had a beautiful voice and that dear enunciation which makes every word tell. The vote in favour of Mabel was unanimous. Her paper had thought; it had even style. In all respects it was far above the production of an ordinary schoolgirl, and beyond doubt it was far and away the best essay written.

Priscilla’s paper passed muster, but it did not even win the second prize. Mabel looked quite modest and strikingly handsome when the great prize was bestowed upon her – a magnificent edition of all the great English poets, bound in calf and bearing the school coat-of-arms.

Mrs Lyttelton, more astonished than pleased, was nevertheless forced to congratulate Mabel. She turned soon afterwards to one of the girls.

“I must confess,” she said, “that I never was so surprised in my life.”

“I should have been just as amazed as you,” answered Constance, “but for the fact that there is far more in Mabel than any one has the least idea of. She is a poet, you know.”

“A poet, my dear?”

“Yes; indeed she is. We simply would not believe it; but she read us some of her verses. A few, of course, were nothing but drivel; but there were lines on the sunset which quite amazed me, for they were full of thought.”

“I am glad to hear it, Constance; nevertheless, I may as well confess to you that my feelings at the present moment are mingled ones. I wanted Priscilla to win the prize.”

Meanwhile Mabel, surrounded by glory – her schoolfellows and the different visitors who had come to the school for the occasion crowding round her and congratulating her – had no longer any feeling of remorse. She acknowledged that Annie was right, and loved Annie, for the time being, with all her heart.

It was Annie herself who took the telegram to the post-office to convey the great information to Lady Lushington. It was Annie herself who was the happy recipient of the reply which came later on that evening. The words of Lady Lushington’s telegram were brief:

“Congratulation. True to my word. Join me in Paris on Friday. Writing to Mrs Lyttelton.”

The three girls with whom this story first opened were together once more in the private sitting-room at Lyttelton School. When Mabel had read her telegram she flung it across to Priscilla.

“Then all is well,” she said; “and we owe it to Annie.”

“Yes,” said Priscilla. “And I have had a telegram,” she added, “an hour ago. It is from Uncle Josiah. He wishes me to remain with Mrs Lyttelton daring the vacation. He doesn’t care that I should return home at present.”

“Well, that will suit you exactly, won’t it?” said Annie.

“I suppose so. I only wonder what Mrs Lyttelton will say.”

“And I am going to my uncle. We all break up to-morrow; but you and I shall meet again in the autumn, Priscilla. You will have to say good-bye to dear old Mabel now.”

“You must wish me luck,” said Mabel. “I won’t forget my part; you need have no anxiety about your school fees.”

“Uncle Josiah seems pleased on the whole that I should remain,” answered Priscilla, “although I cannot make out the wording of his telegram; but I do wonder what arrangement he will make for paying Mrs Lyttelton.”

“If he cannot pay her you ought to go back,” said Annie, who did not at all wish to have this additional expense laid at Mabel’s door. She wished as much as possible of Mabel’s money should be devoted to herself. “But I suppose you will hear in the morning.”

“Yes; I suppose so,” said Priscilla.

“You look pretty miserable, Priscie. I wonder why, seeing all that Mabel and I have done for you.”

“All that I have done for you, you mean,” said Priscilla.

“Well, I like that,” said Annie.

“I will speak out for once,” said Priscilla, her eyes flashing fire and her pale face becoming suffused with colour. “I have gone under, and I hate myself. The hour of triumph to-day ought to have been mine. Don’t you suppose that I feel it? I loathe myself so deeply that I don’t think I am even a good enough girl to help my aunt in the house-work at home; and I pity the village dressmaker who would have me apprenticed to her. I am so bad that I loathe myself. Oh, you think that I shall be happy. You don’t know me; I can never be happy again!”

Mabel’s face immediately became pale. She looked at Priscilla as though she were going to cry. It was Annie who took the bull by the horns.

“Now, this is sheer nonsense,” she said. “You know perfectly well, Priscilla, that no better thing could have been done than what has happened to-day. In the first place, you are not disgraced, for the essay you read was quite creditable. It ought to have been, indeed, seeing that it was my work. And, in the second place, you have a year’s schooling guaranteed. With your brains, think what you will achieve – a fine scholarship at least, and then Girton as your reward. You mean to say that for the sake of some little pricks of conscience you would not take these advantages? Of course you will! Indeed, you have done so, so there’s no good saying anything more about it.”

“I know there isn’t,” said Priscilla. “I don’t expect sympathy; I deserve all that I can get.” She left the room as she spoke.

“Oh, isn’t she quite too dreadful?” said Annie.

“I don’t know,” answered Mabel; “I expect I’d feel much the same if I were she.”

The next day Priscilla received a letter from her uncle. She had written to tell him that the funds for another year’s schooling had been provided for her.

“My dear Priscilla,” he wrote, “I am more disappointed than glad at your news; but of course, if a friend wants to pay for your schooling, I don’t interfere. You say that you hope to win a scholarship at the end of the term. That may or may not be the case. All that I can say is that I hope you will get it, for it is my intention to wash my hands of you. I made you a sensible offer, and you have rejected it. Your aunt and I agree that as you are too grand for us, we, on our part, are too poor for you. Henceforth you may look to your father in India for any assistance you may require. But as I don’t want to be hard on you, I am willing to pay a small sum for your support during the coming holidays, which I wish you to spend at Lyttelton School. I enclose money herewith – five pounds. I have no doubt the mistress will keep you for that for it will more than cover your consumption of food.

“Good-bye, my dear Priscilla. I look upon you as an instance of want of gratitude. You are too fine a lady for your aunt and me. – Your uncle, Josiah.”

Chapter Nine
The Rector

It was a pretty old Rectory to which Annie Brooke was going in order to spend the first week of her holidays. It was situated on the borders of Wales, and the scenery was superb. Mountains surrounded it, and seemed, after a fashion, to shut it in. But these glorious mountains, with their ever-changing, ever-shifting effects of light and shade, their dark moments, their moments of splendour, were all lost upon such a nature as that of Annie Brooke.

She hated the Rectory. Her feelings towards Uncle Maurice were only those of toleration.

She loathed the time she spent there, and now the one thought in her breast was the feeling that her emancipation was near, and that very soon she would be on her way to gay Paris to join Mabel Lushington.

Yes, Annie had achieved much, if those actions of hers could be spoken of in such a light; she had won that which she desired. Priscilla remained at school. Mabel had left Lyttelton School, and she (Annie) was to join her friend on the Continent.

Still, of course, there was a small thing to be done. Uncle Maurice must produce the needful. Annie could not travel to Paris without money, and Uncle Maurice must supply it. She did not anticipate much difficulty in getting the necessary sum from her uncle. Her dress was, of course, very unsuitable for the time of triumph she hoped to have in the gay capital and during her time abroad with Lady Lushington and Mabel. But nevertheless, she was not going to fret about these things in advance, and perhaps Uncle Maurice would be good for more than the money for her journey.

She was seated now in a high gig, her uncle himself driving her. He had come to meet her at the nearest railway station ten miles away, and as the old horse jogged along and the old gig bumped over the uneven road Annie congratulated herself again and again on having such a short time to spend at home.

Mr Brooke was an old clergyman approaching seventy years of age. He had lived in this one parish for over forty years; he loved every stone on the road, every light on the hills, every bush that grew, every plant that flowered; and as to the inhabitants of the little parish of Rashleigh, they were to old Maurice Brooke as his own children.

He was pleased to see Annie, and showed it now by smiling at her from time to time and doing his best to make her comfortable.

“Is the rug tucked tightly round you, Annie?” he said. “You will feel the fresh air a bit after your time down south. It’s fine air we have in these ports – none finer in the land – but it’s apt to be a little fresh when you come new upon it. And how are you, my dear girl? I’ve been looking, forward to your holidays. There’s a great deal for you to do, as usual.”

“Oh uncle!” said Annie, “but you know I don’t like doing things.”

“Eh, my love?” said the old clergyman. “But we have to do them, all the same, when they come to us in the guise of duty.”

“That is what I hate,” said Annie, speaking crossly. “Don’t let’s worry about them to-night, Uncle Maurice; I have had a long journey, and am tired.”

“Poor bit thing!” said the old man. He stopped for a minute to pull the rag up higher round Annie’s knees. “Mrs Shelf is so pleased at your coming back, Annie. She looks to you to help her with the preserving. She is not as young as she was, and her rheumatism is worse.”

“Oh, I hate rheumatic old folks!” thought Annie, but she did not say the words aloud.

By-and-by they reached the Rectory, and while the rector took old Rover back to his stable Annie ran into the house.

The Rectory was large and rambling, and had

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“You are looking well, my dear,” said the woman, “and I am glad you are back, for we want young life about the old place.”

“You won’t have it long,” said Annie.

Mrs Shelf took no notice. “The raspberries are past,” she said; “but there are a good few gooseberries still to preserve, and there are the early pears coming on; they make beautiful jam, if boiled whole with cloves and lemon-peel and a little port wine thrown in. But you must stand over them the whole time in order to keep them from breaking. Then there are the peaches; I set store by them, and always put them in bottles and bury them in the garden. There are gherkins, too, for pickling; and there are a whole lot of walnuts. We mustn’t lose a day about pickling the walnuts, or they’ll be spoiled. We might begin over some of the jams to-morrow. What do you think?”

“You may if you like, Shelfy,” said Annie; “but I sha’n’t. I have only come here for a visit. I’m off to Paris immediately.”

“You off to Paris!” said the old woman. “Highty-tighty! what will your uncle say?”

“Uncle Maurice will say just what I like him to say,” answered Annie. “Please have a chop or something nice for my supper, for I can’t stand slops. And is my room ready?”

“I hope so, child. I told Peggie to see to it.” Peggie was not the best of servants, and Annie’s room was by no means in a state of immaculate order. It was a large room, but, like the rest of the house, very badly furnished. There was a huge old four-poster for the girl to sleep in, and there was a little rickety table which held a looking-glass with a crack down the middle, and there was a cracked white basin and jug on another table at the farther end of the room. Of wardrobe there was none; but a large door, when opened, revealed some shelves and a hanging press.

“Oh! it is just as of old,” thought the girl – “an intolerable, horrid place. I could never live here – never; and what’s more, I won’t. How wise I was to make provision for myself while at school! I declare, bad as I thought the old place, I didn’t imagine it to be quite so ramshackle.”

While these thoughts were rushing through Annie’s mind she was brushing out her pretty golden hair and arranging it becomingly round her small head. Then she straightened and tidied her dress, and presently ran downstairs, her trim little figure quite stylish-looking for that old house, and pretty enough, in the rector’s opinion, to gladden any place which she chose to grace.

Old Mr Brooke loved Annie. She was all he possessed in the world. He had never married, and when his only brother, on dying, had left the child to his care, he had vowed to be a father to her, to bring her up well, and to do the best he could for her. Annie was the child of an English father and an Italian mother. In appearance she had taken in every respect after her father’s race, being fair, with all the attributes of the Saxon, but in her nature she had some of the craftiness which distinguishes the Italian. Hers was a difficult nature to fathom, and to a very high-minded man like the Rev. Maurice Brooke she was a problem he could never solve. For a couple of years past he had owned himself puzzled by Annie. When she was a little child she delighted him; but more and more, as she returned from school for each holiday, he felt that there was something behind. She was frank with him; she grumbled quite openly in his presence. These things he did not mind, but he was sure there was something behind the grumbling, and that fact puzzled and distressed him.

Still, he looked forward to the weeks which Annie spent at Rashleigh Rectory as the golden periods of his life. All the little pleasures and indulgences were kept for this time. “When my niece comes back we’ll do so-and-so,” was his favourite remark. “When Annie comes, Mrs Shelf, we must have that new tarpaulin put down; and don’t you think her room ought to be repapered and painted for her? Girls like pretty things, don’t they?”

But Mrs Shelf read Annie’s nature far more correctly than did her old uncle.

“If I were you, Mr Brooke,” she said, “I wouldn’t spend money on that girl until I knew what she was after. Maybe she won’t take to the room when it’s painted and papered.”

“Won’t take to it?” he replied. “But naturally she’ll take to it, Mrs Shelf, for it will be her own room, where, please God, she will sleep for many long years, until, indeed, she finds another home of her own.”

Mrs Shelf was silent when the rector said these things. But, somehow, the room was not papered, nor was the old paint renewed; and Annie failed to notice these facts.

“Well, my little girl,” he said on the present occasion, as they both sat down to supper in a small room which opened out of the study, “it’s a sight for sair een to see you back again; and well you look, Annie – well and bonny.” He looked at her admiringly. She was not at all a beautiful girl, but she was beautiful to him. “You have a look of my brother Geoffrey,” he said. “Ah, Geoffrey, dear fellow, was remarkably good-looking. Not that looks signify much, Annie; we ought never to set store by them. It is the beauty of the mind we ought to cultivate, my love.”

“Well,” said Annie, “I’d like to be handsome. I don’t see, for my part, why I should not have both. What do you think, uncle?”

“That would be as the Almighty chose,” he replied. “But come now, my love; time passes quickly. I often forget, myself, how the years run on. How old are you, my dearie?”

“I was seventeen my last birthday, Uncle Maurice; quite grown up, you know.”

“Why, to be sure, to be sure,” he replied.

“Your mother was married at seventeen, poor young thing! But in these days we are more sensible, and girls don’t take the burden of life on them while they are still children. You are a schoolgirl yet, Annie, and won’t be anything else for another year at least.”

“Oh, all right, uncle,” said Annie, who had no wish to change Lyttelton School for the dullness of Rashleigh Rectory.

“But the months fly on,” said the old man. “Help yourself to a roast-apple, my dear. And before we know where we are,” he continued, “you’ll have left school and be back here with me. I look forward to that time, my little Annie; there will be a power of things for you to do, and the parish will be all the better for your society.”

Annie shuffled her feet and grew red. The old rector did not especially notice her. He was absorbed in contemplation. He had eaten his large bowl of Quaker oats, and now he laid the spoon on his plate and gazed into the fire.

“It’s a fine thing,” he said, “to be able to help the poor and needy. I always say to myself, ‘When my bit Annie comes back we’ll do so-and-so. We’ll have more mothers’ meetings and classes for young women.’ There are some mill-hands near here, Annie, who are neglected in their spiritual part shamefully. They want a lady like yourself to understand them and to show them what girls ought to know. You might have sewing-classes, for instance; and you might read aloud to them just to interest them, you know. I have been thinking a lot about it. And then what do you say to a Sunday afternoon class, just in one of the big rooms here, for the mill-hands? It would be a pretty bit of work, and I wouldn’t be above catching them, so to speak, by guile – I mean that I would give them tea and cake. Mrs Shelf wouldn’t mind. We’d have to manage her, wouldn’t we, Annie?”

“Yes, uncle,” said Annie, yawning; “yes.”

“Then there’s a carving-class for the young men.”

“I wouldn’t mind that so much as the other,” said Annie suddenly.

“Now, that is really nice of you, my child, for those rough mill-hands are often very troublesome. I would always accompany you myself to the carving-class. We’d get our patterns from London, and you would encourage them a bit.”

“Only I can’t carve,” said Annie.

“Well, well, that needn’t be a difficulty; for it is easy to learn, I am told; and you might have lessons during your last term at school. Oh, there’ll be a deal for you to do, my pretty one, and no minute left unemployed; and you, all the time while you are so busy, the very sunshine of your old uncle’s life.”

“Am I, Uncle Maurice?” she asked.

“Are you that?” he replied. He rose and held out his arms to her. “Aren’t you just all I’ve got,” he said – “all I have got?”

She allowed him to kiss her, and even faintly responded, for she had made up her mind not to trouble him about Paris that night.

After a time he allowed her to go to bed, which she was exceedingly glad to do. But when she had flung herself in her bed and was quickly lost in slumber, the old man himself sat up and thought a great deal about her, and prayed for her not a little.

“She is a bonny lass, and a pretty one,” he said to himself; “and, thank the Lord! I don’t see a trace of that dark-eyed mother about her. She takes after Geoffrey, the best of men. Yes, she is a good child, and will settle down to my busy life here, I make no doubt, with great equanimity. I have much to be thankful for, and my Annie is the apple of my eye. All the same, I wish – I do wish – that she was just a little more responsive.”

The next day Annie awoke with the lark. She jumped up, and long before breakfast was out of doors. The house was shabby enough, but the Rectory garden was a place to revel in. The rector cared nothing about indoor decoration, but his hobby was his garden. Lawns with some of the finest turf in England rolled majestically away from the house towards the swift-flowing river at the other end of the grounds. There were gay parterres filled with bright flowers. There were shrubberies and paddocks, and even a labyrinth and an old Elizabethan walk where the yew-trees were cut into grotesque forms of foxes and griffins. There was an old sun-dial, which at one time used to interest Annie but which she had long ceased to notice; and there was a kitchen-garden, which ought to have delighted the heart of any young person; for not only were the vegetables first class, but here was to be found the best fruit in the neighbourhood. The rector was celebrated for his peaches and apricots, his pears, his apples, his nuts. He had a long vinery full of choice grapes, and there were hotbeds containing melons of the finest flavour; and there were even – and these were as a crown of all crowns to the old rector – pines growing here in perfection.

Annie was too self-loving and too keenly appreciative of the good things of life not to like the old garden. She forgot some of her grievances now as she walked here and there, helping herself indiscriminately to the ripest and beet fruit.

By-and-by the postman was seen coming up the avenue. Annie ran to meet him. She had been delayed for a day in leaving Lyttelton School, and she knew, therefore, that Mabel’s invitation would probably arrive at Rashleigh Rectory this morning. Yes; here it was in Mabel’s own writing. Annie looked at the outside of the envelope for a minute or two with intense appreciation; then she deliberately opened it and took out two letters. The first was from no less a person than Lady Lushington herself:

“My dear Miss Brooke, – I write by Mabel’s wish to beg of you to join my niece and myself here early next week. We are going to Switzerland, where we hope you will accompany us, but will remain here at the ‘Grand’ until Wednesday. If you can manage to be with us on Tuesday night, that will be quite time enough. I hope your uncle will spare you to us; and you may assure him that while you are my guest you will be treated as though you were my child, and will have no expense of any sort.

“Looking forward to making your acquaintance, and with my compliments to your uncle, believe me, yours sincerely, Henrietta Lushington.”

“Hurrah! hurrah!” cried Annie. She read the other letter, but more carelessly; Lady Lushington’s was the important one. Mabel wrote:

“Dear Annie, – It is all right. Don’t fail to be with us on Tuesday night. Aunt Henrietta will send Parker to meet you at the Gare du Nord, and you will doubtless find some escort to bring you to Paris. It’s great fun here, although the weather is very hot, and we are dying to be away amongst the cool mountains of Switzerland. Aunt Henrietta goes to all the fashionable hotels, and dresses exquisitely, so if you can screw a little money out of that old flint of an uncle of yours, so much the better; but even if you are shabby, I dare say I can manage to rig you up. – Your affectionate friend, Mabel Lushington.”

“P.S.– That awful bill has not come yet! I shake when I think of it.