tumbling over her face and neck, and glaring down angrily.

"Did I startle you? What a pity it's only me. Some one else-Jack, for instance -should be here to see what a figure of fun you look perched up there, with those pink and white cheeks of yours, looking for all the world like a lot of nice strawberries and cream."

And Val's brother-Plantagenet Egerton, heir to his father's poverty-smacks his lips and winks mischievously, like the inelegant young ruffian that he is.

"Don't be a fool, Plant," his sister retorts, with utter disregard to refinement in her mother tongue. "I wish you would cease cramming that stupid Jack down my throat. And give me a swing, a nice high one!"

"All right-there you go." And he sends her flying towards the star she covets.

"Thank you," she says, quite amicably,

when she recovers her breath, which she lost among the tree-tops. "Why, Plant, what makes your face so red? You must have caught scarlet fever, or something!"

"Scarlet fever!" Mrs. Egerton exclaims, in alarm. "Have you a cold, or a sore throat, Plant ?"

"What a muff and a molly-coddle you must think me, mother," he replies, in a dignified, offended tone, trying to make himself look taller by standing on his tiptoes.

66

'Men don't catch those infantine ailments so easily!"

"Men don't-but boys might. Hobbledehoys are fit subjects for anything,” Val informs him, with the air of a female Methuselah.

"Even for your ridicule, I suppose. I know why you said that. It's because I chaffed you about Jack!"

"But what has made your face scarlet?"

persists Mrs. Egerton, her motherly solicitude all alive.

Simply because I have been chasing Jim all over the great meadow. Such a fuss as I had to slip the halter on him."

"But why did you want to catch him to-night ?"

"Because I am going out very early tomorrow. By-the-by, what do you say to coming out too, Val?"

"I say yes, of course.

We'll have a first

rate gallop round by the mill copse, and brush the dew off with our horses' hoofs."

"No, we won't-we'll go down by the river,” Plant observes, wilfully.

"I shall go wherever my fancy leads me," Miss Egerton remarks superbly, with a toss of her tangled locks.

"All right. Your fancy will lead you by the river, I daresay." And Plant again intelligently screws up his left eye into a

smaller compass even than nature designed it to occupy. Val is quite in the dark as to his meaning, but is too proud to own to her dulness. So she dismounts from the swing, and strutting like an embryo duchess or princess to her mother, tucks that meek little woman under her arm, and marches her towards the stairs that lead to the upper part of the house.

"We will go and see how my blue grenadine looks by candlelight," she ordains, in her peremptory fashion.

As they pass through the sitting-room, the piping accents of Cissy (christened after St. Cecilia, whose portrait her baby face was supposed to resemble), the youngest born Egerton, and a flaxen-haired cherub, arrest their steps.

"Teach me how to do this stitch, Val!" And two pink, fubsy little hands, with dimples for knuckles, hold up pleadingly

for inspection a much ill-used sampler.

"And put this chimney straight, Val! It will go awry, and I can't draw it right!" whines Gus, another Egerton olive branch, with a shock auburn head, and a pair of nankeen knickerbockers.

"I am going to see the world, my dears; and having several matters of importance awaiting my attention, I really cannot do the stitch, or straighten the chimney," quoth Val, in a new dignity voice.

The children stare at her, and then at one another, aghast; then they give a merry shout, in which Plant, who is leaning with his elbows on the window-sill, joins.

"Miss Egerton is going to see the world on stilts, my dears," he announces gravely, mimicking his sister's manner. "She is going on a search for a duke or a prince, so that you may have a brother-in-law to keep you in order with a rod in pickle."