entertaining company. She had been chatting there an hour, or longer, when she wheeled round on Mrs. Jackson with an astonished cry.

"I've been here all the morning, and you've never said a word about my father and mother," she declared. "They're quite well, thank you; but you might have inquired."

"Well, there!" stammered Mrs. Jackson, "It was on the tip of me tongue half a dozen times, an' something drove it away again. An' how are they, Miss Meg?"

"I've just told you. I do wish they'd come back to the Grange, but they seem to hate the very mention of it. I wonder why?"

"Elmdale's a long way frae Lunnon," said Betty, catching at a straw in this sudden whirlpool.

"We're just as far from London in Cornwall," laughed the girl.

"Oh, is that where you've gone?" put in Mrs. Jackson incautiously.

"Yes. Didn't you know? Hadn't you the address for letters?"

"No, miss. Miggles said"—Miggles was the peripatetic postman—"that all letters had to be sent to Holloway & Dobb, in Nuttonby."

Marguérite looked rather puzzled, because her recollection ran differently; she dropped the subject, thinking, doubtless, that her parents' behests had some good reason behind them, and ought to be respected.

"Anyhow," she went on, "now that I've broken the ice by coming here, my people may be willing to return. I don't suppose Mr. Armathwaite will stay beyond the summer."

"Mr. Walker tole me he thought of takin' the place for a year," said Mrs. Jackson.

"Indeed. I'll ask him at lunch. I've wasted the morning, so I'll stay another night, and start early to-morrow. You'll find me a bed in the cottage, won't you, Mrs. Jackson?"

"Mebbe, Mr. Armathwaite will be vexed," said Betty, making a half-hearted effort to carry out the compact between herself and her employer.

"Leave Mr. Armathwaite to me," laughed Marguérite. "He's a bear, and he growls, but he has no claws, not for women, at any rate. No one could be nicer than he last night. I felt an awful fool, and looked it, 

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