having it on.  "One gets into the habit of dressing like this out there," he said in a tone of excuse. The Pirate Boy was in great demand at the dance. 

 Pretty Mrs. Fielden, who had driven over from Stanby, beautifully dressed as usual, and slightly amused, ordered her carriage early, and had merely come to oblige those quaint old dears, the Miss Traceys. 

 Even at the house-warming Mrs. Fielden would have considered it quite impossible to sit out a dance. She brought an elderly Colonel with her, and she conducted him into a corner behind The Palm, and talked to him there till it was her turn to dance with the Vicar. Had it not been Mrs. Fielden, whose position placed her above criticism, the breath of envy might have whispered that it was hardly fair that one couple should occupy the favourite sitting-out place—two drawing-room chairs beneath The Palm—to the exclusion of others. But Mrs. Fielden being whom she was, the young ladies of Stowel were content to pass and repass the coveted chairs and to whisper admiringly, "How exquisite she is looking to-night!" 

 "Is there anything of me left?" she said to me, looking cool and unruffled when her dance with the Vicar was over. She had only made one short turn of the room with him, and her beautiful dress and her hair were quite undisturbed. 

 "You haven't danced half so conscientiously as his other partners have," I said. 

 "I wanted to talk about the parish," said Mrs. Fielden, "so I stopped. I think I should like to go and get cool somewhere." 

 "I will take you to sit under The Palm again, as Colonel Jardine did," I replied, "and you shall laugh at all the broad backs and flat feet of our country neighbours, and hear everybody say as they pass how beautiful you are." 

 Mrs. Fielden turned her head towards me as if to speak, and I had a sudden vivid conviction that she would have told me I was rude had I not been a cripple with one leg. 

 We sat under The Palm. Mrs. Fielden never rushes into a conversation. Presently she said,— 

 "Why do you come to this sort of thing? It can't amuse you." 

 "You told me the other day," I said, "that I ought to cultivate a small mind and small interests." 

 "Did I?" said Mrs. Fielden lightly.  "If I think one thing one day, I generally think 

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