. Her formal bow and
her merciless parting speech dwelt, try how he might to forget them, on
Allan's mind; he began to grow more and more anxious as the idle hour
wore on, to recover his lost place in her favor. To call again that day
at the cottage, and ask if he had been so unfortunate as to offend her,
was impossible. To put the question in writing with the needful nicety
of expression proved, on trying the experiment, to be a task beyond his
literary reach. After a turn or two up and down the room, with his pen
in his mouth, he decided on the more diplomatic course (which happened,
in this case, to be the easiest course, too), of writing to Miss Milroy
as cordially as if nothing had happened, and of testing his position in
her good graces by the answer that she sent him back. An invitation of
some kind (including her father, of course, but addressed directly to
herself) was plainly the right thing to oblige her to send a written
reply; but here the difficulty occurred of what the invitation was to
be. A ball was not to be thought of, in his present position with the
resident gentry. A dinner-party, with no indispensable elderly lady on
the premises to receive Miss Milroy--except Mrs. Gripper, who could only
receive her in the kitchen--was equally out of the question. What was
the invitation to be? Never backward, when he wanted help, in asking for
it right and left in every available direction, Allan, feeling himself
at the end of his own resources, coolly rang the bell, and astonished
the servant who answered it by inquiring how the late family at Thorpe
Ambrose used to amuse themselves, and what sort of invitations they were
in the habit of sending to their friends.

"The family did what the rest of the gentry did, sir," said the man,
staring at his master in utter bewilderment. "They gave dinner-parties
and balls. And in fine summer weather, sir, like this, they sometimes
had lawn-parties and picnics--"

"That'll do!" shouted Allan. "A picnic's just the thing to please her.
Richard, you're an invaluable man; you may go downstairs again."

Richard retired wondering, and Richard's master seized his ready pen.

"DEAR MISS MILROY--Since I left you it has suddenly struck me that we
might have a picnic. A little change and amusement (what I should call a
good shaking-up, if I wasn't writing to a young lady) is just the thing
for you, after being so long indoors lately in Mrs. Milroy's room. A
picnic is a change, a