y!' said Mr. Kingsland in soft deprecation.

'My dear,' Mme. Lasalle went on mockingly, 'perhaps he would
not approve of your eating so much ice. Hadn't you better take
care?'

'Must we ask him about everything now, before we can have
you?' cried Josephine, in great indignation, quite unfeigned,
though possibly springing from a double root. 'O, was it _he_
came for you to Greenbush?'

But with that Hazel roused herself.

'You had better ask him anything you want answered,' she said.
'I think he has quite a genius that way.'

'What way? O, you know, friends, perhaps, _she likes it_. What
way, Hazel?'

'Does he speak soft when he gives his orders?' said Kitty
Fisher. 'Or does he use his ordinary tone?'

'And oh, Miss Kennedy,' said little Molly Seaton, 'isn't it
_awfully_ nice to have such a handsome man tell you what to do?'

Now Hazel had been at her wits' end, feeling as if there was a
trap for her, whatever she said or did not say. Pain and
nervousness and almost fright had kept her still. But Molly's
question brought things to such a climax, that she burst into
an uncontrollable little laugh, and so answered everybody at
once in the best manner possible. The sound of her laugh
brought back the gentlemen too,--roaming off after their own
ices,--and that would make a diversion.

But it came up again and again. It was to some too tempting a
subject of fun; for others it had a deeper interest; it could
not be suffered to lie still. Wych Hazel's ears could hardly
get out of the sound of raillery, in all sorts of forms; from
the soft insinuation of mischief in a mosquito's song, to the
downright attacks of Kitty Fisher's teeth and Phinny Powder's
claws. The air was full of it at last, to Wych Hazel's fancy;
even the gentlemen, when they dared not speak openly, seemed
in manner or tone to be commiserating or laughing at her.

'The diplomacy of truth!' said Mr. Kingsland to Mr. Falkirk,
as Hazel passed near them with Mme. Lasalle. 'I must believe
in it as a fixed fact,--where it exists! I should judge, by
rough estimate, that Miss Kennedy had been asked about fifty-
five trying questions this day; and in not one case, to my
knowledge, has her answer even clipped the truth. She is a
ninth wonder,--and from that on to the twenty-ninth! With all
her innocence and ignorance--which would not comprehend nine-
tenths of what might be said to her, I do not know the man who
would dare say one word which she should not