CHAPTER VI.

MR. CASS SPEAKS.

 

Jennie Brawn sat in her bedroom with an agonised took on her face, with inky fingers and tumbled hair. Miss Brawn was courting the Muse.

As yet she had had but ill success, for the Muse was not in a kindly mood.

"If, dear, thou should'st unhappy be, Remember me, Remember me!" murmured the poetess. "I think that will do for a refrain. But how am I to begin? Ah!" with a sudden inspiration. "Spring in the first verse, summer and roses in the second, then winter and dying for an effective finish." And she began to thresh out the first lines.

"The spring is flowering all the world----"

"Humph!" she broke off. "That sounds as though spring were a baker! I must try again."

But before she could think of an alternative line the door burst open and Ruth rushed in violently, all on fire with excitement. "Jennie! Jennie! she cried, plumping down on the bed. I've had a proposal!"

"Oh!" Jennie, quite phlegmatic, laid down her pen. "Geoffrey Heron has you to be his wife?"

"That is the plain English of it, I suppose," Ruth said, impatiently. "Of course I said 'No.'"

"Of course you did," remarked the prosaic Miss Brawn. For prosaic she was in ordinary matters, in spite of her poetic gift. "You are in love with the Master?" She put this in the form of a query.

"Haven't I told you a thousand times!" cried Miss Cass. "I love him as dearly as he loves me."

"That's a pity."

"Why is it a pity?" asked the girl, her face flushing.

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