s
home!"

Mademoiselle laughed merrily. It was astonishing how bright and young
she looked in the prospect of the unexpected holiday. She was in such a
good temper that it seemed really impossible for her to say No.

"I will tell you what I can, but you know it is not _comme il faut_ to
criticise the house, in which you stay. I will write all the pleasant
things, but for the jokes--the _contretemps_, no! Pixie shall do that
if she will, I must keep them to myself. If they are all as nice as the
son whom I have seen, they must be charming. I have never met a more
pleasant youth."

The girls wagged their heads in meaning fashion.

"We saw him!" they said meaningly--"we saw him! Pixie said he was
coming about four, so we kept a lookout, and were obliged to go to the
window to read some small print, just as he happened to walk up the
steps. Ethel heard the bell, and stopped practising five minutes before
the time, and strolled casually downstairs to meet him. He stood aside
to let her pass, and she says he smiles with his eyes, just like Pixie!
Oh, of course, we don't expect you to tell tales, but just to ease our
curiosity. We do take such an extraordinary interest in that family!"

"There is another family in which I take an even greater interest just
now, and that's the Vanes!" remarked Kate meaningly. "Miss Phipps wrote
to Mr Vane, and I met poor Lottie just now with eyes all magenta with
crying over a letter she had just received from him. She saw I was
sorry for her, and I think she was thankful to have someone to talk to,
for she asked me to read it." She threw up her hands with a gesture of
dismay. "Well, I don't know what I should do if my father wrote me a
letter like that!"

"Ow-w-ow!" Ethel shivered dramatically. "How horrible! What did he
say? Was it terribly furious?"

"It wasn't furious at all, not even angry; but oh, so sad and solemn
that it made you turn cold to read it! `It had tears in it,' as
Fraulein said of Margaret's singing, and you could tell he was so
bitterly, bitterly disappointed! Lottie felt that more than if he had
been cross, for she does so love to be loved and fussed over; and if
ever there was a poor thing scared out of her wits at the thought of to-
morrow, it is herself at this moment. He comes to take her away, you
know, and instead of the holidays being a relief, as she expected, she
is longing for them to be over. She says now that she would rather not