ster's influence would be greater, Miss Meg?"

Meg's little soft mouth, was quivering, her eyes were on the ground,
because the tears would have splashed out if she had lifted them.

"Oh-h-h!" she said again. "Oh, how very horrid I have been--oh-h-h!"

She covered her face with her hands, for one of her quickly gathered
tears was trembling on her lashes.

Mr. Gillet dropped the strap and the pipe, and looked across to her
with tender eyes.

"I am more than twice your age, Miss Meg, old enough nearly to be
your father--you will forgive me for saying all this, won't you?
I was thinking, of my sister who died. I had another little sister,
too, a year older, but she was hard--only event to her once.
She is one of the best women in England now, but her lips are severe.
Little Miss Meg, I could not bear the thought of you growing hard."

Half a dozen big tears had fallen down among the forks. Meg was
crying because it was borne upon her what a very hateful creature
she was. First Alan lectured her and spoke of his sister, and now
this man.

He misinterpreted her silence.

"I have no right to speak to you like this, because my life has been
any colour but white--that is it, isn't it, Miss Meg?" he said with
great sadness.

Meg dropped her sheltering hands.

"Oh, no," she said, "oh! how CAN you think so? It is only I am so
horrid." She rummaged in her pocket and brought out the ribbon.

"Will you take it again?" she said--"oh, PLEASE, just to make me
feel less horrid. Oh, please take it!"

She looked at him with wet, imploring eyes, and held it out.

He took it, smoothed its crumpledness, and placed it in his
pocket-book.

"God bless you," he said, and the tone made Meg sob.

CHAPTER XX

Little Judy

Across the grass came a little flying figure, Judy in a short
pink frock with her wild curls blowing about her face.

"Are you a candidate for sunstroke--where IS your hat, Miss Judy?"
Mr. Gillet asked.

Judy shook back her dark tangle:

"Sorrow a know I knows," she said--"it's a banana the General
is afther dyin' for, and sure it's a dead body I shall live to see
misself if you've eaten all the oranges."

Meg pushed the bag of fruit across the cloth to her, and tried to
tilt her hat over her tell-tale eyes.

But the bright dark ones had seen the wet lashes the first moment.

"I s'pose you've been reading stupid poetry and making Meg cry?"
she said, with an aggressive glance from Mr. Gil