an, very irritable and obstinate.

It happened that an Eton boy was staying in the house, of the
blundering lumpish type; he had had more than his share of luck in
breaking windows and articles of furniture. One morning Mr. B----,
finding his study window broken, declared in a paroxysm of rage that
the next thing he broke the boy should go.

That same afternoon, it happened he was playing at small cricket with
Maud, and made a sharp cut into the great greenhouse. There was a
crash of glass, followed by Maud's ringing laugh.

They stopped their game, and went to discuss the position of events.
As they stood there, Mr. B----'s garden door, just round the corner,
was heard to open and slam, and craunch, craunch, came his stately
pace upon the gravel.

They stared with a humorous horror at one another. In an instant,
Maud caught up a lawn-tennis racquet that was near, and smashed the
next pane to atoms. Mr. B---- quickened his pace, hearing the crash,
and came round the corner with his most judicial and infuriated air,
rather hoping to pack the culprit out of the place, only to be met
by his favourite daughter. "Papa, I'm so sorry, I've broken the
greenhouse with my racquet. May I send for Smith? I'll pay him out of
my own money."

The Eton boy adored her from that day forth; and so did other people
for similar reasons.

I, personally, always rather wondered that Arthur was ever attracted
by Miss B----, for he was very fastidious, and the least suggestion
of aiming at effect or vulgarity, or hankering after notoriety, would
infallibly have disgusted him. But this was the reason.

She was never vulgar, never self-conscious. She acted on each
occasion on impulse, never calculating effects, never with reference
to other people's opinions.

A gentleman once said, remonstrating with her for driving alone with
a Cambridge undergraduate in his dog-cart down to Richmond after a
ball, "People are beginning to talk about you."

"What fools they must be!" said Miss B----, and showed not the
slightest inclination to hear more of the matter.

There is no question, I think, that Arthur's grave and humorous ways
attracted her. He, when at his best, was a racy and paradoxical
talker--with that natural tinge of veiled melancholy or cynicism
half-suspected which is so fascinating, as seeming to imply a
"_past_," a history. He ventured to speak to her more than once
about her tendency to "drift." He told me of one conversation in