aced the table with his own hands, while Ursula
scorched her cheeks over the _entrees_ downstairs.

"All this for Northcote," he said, when she ran up for a moment, done up
in a big white apron, her face crimson with the fire and anxiety
combined: "for Miss Beecham has been here before, and you made no fuss
about her then."

"She came to tea," said Ursula. "And I got a cake, which was all any one
could do; but a dinner is a very different thing." Indeed she had by
this time come to share her father's opinion, that dinner was the right
and dignified thing in all cases, and that they had been hitherto living
in a very higgledy-piggledy way. The dinner had gone to her head.

"Then it is for Northcote, as I say," said Reginald. "Do you know who he
is?"

"A Dissenter," said Ursula, with a certain languor; "but so, you know,
is Mr. Copperhead, and he is the chief person here now-a-days. Papa
thinks there is nobody like him. And so is Phoebe."

"Oh, have you come so far as that?" said Reginald, with a little tinge
of colour in his face. He laughed, but the name moved him. "It is a
pretty fresh sort of country name, not quite like such an accomplished
person."

"Oh, that is just like you men, with your injustice! Because she is
clever you take it amiss; you are all jealous of her. Look at her pretty
colour and her beautiful hair; if that is not fresh I should like to
know what is. She might be Hebe instead of Phoebe," said Ursula, who had
picked up scraps of classical knowledge in spite of herself.

"You are a little goose," said Reginald, pinching her ear, but he liked
his sister for her generous partizanship. "Mind you don't come to dinner
with cheeks like that," he said. "I like my sister to be herself, not a
cook-maid, and I don't believe in _entrees_;" but he went away smiling,
and with a certain warmth in his breast. He had gone up and down Grange
Lane many times at the hour of sunset, hoping to meet Phoebe again, but
that sensible young woman had no mind to be talked of, and never
appeared except when she was certain the road was clear. This had
tantalized Reginald more than he chose to avow, even to himself. Pride
prevented him from knocking at the closed door. The old Tozers were
fearful people to encounter, people whom to visit would be to damn
himself in Carlingford; but then the Miss Griffiths were very insipid by
the side of Phoebe, and the variety of her talk, though he had seen so
little of her, seemed to