ca Townsend;
I'm coming down. Up with you!"

Tom pulled a face and obeyed: but showing a disposition to pelt Dorothy
and Bessy, instead of carefully delivering the apples unbruised to Anne,
he was screamed at and set upon at once, Gertrude leading the
opposition.

"Tom, you wicked wretch! Come down this minute, or else behave
properly. I shall--"

The--accidental?--descent of an enormous apple on the bridge of
Gertrude's nose put her announcement of her intentions to speedy flight:
and in laughing over the _fracas_, the ice rapidly melted between the
young strangers.

The apple-gathering proceeded merrily, relieved by a few scenes of this
sort, until the trees were stripped, the apples laid carefully in the
crates for transportation to the garrets, and on their arrival, as
carefully taken out and spread on sheets of grey paper on the floor.
When all was done, the girls were marshalled into Gertrude's room to
tidy themselves: after which they went down to the dining-room. Mrs
Rookwood had provided an excellent dinner for her youthful guests,
including geese, venison, and pheasants, various pies and puddings,
Muscadel and Canary wines. After dinner they played games in the hall
and dining-room, hood-man blind, and hunt the slipper, and when tired of
these, separated into little groups or formed _tete-a-tetes_ for
conversation. Lettice, who could not quite get rid of an outside
feeling, as if she did not belong to the world in which she found
herself, was taken possession of by her oldest acquaintance, Gertrude,
and drawn into a window-seat for what that young lady termed "a proper
chat."

"I thought my cousin was to be here," said Lettice, glancing over the
company.

"Ay, Tom asked him, I believe," said Gertrude. "Maybe his Lord could
not spare him. Do you miss him?"

"I would like to have seen him," said Lettice innocently.

"Tom would not love to hear you say so much, I can tell you," laughed
Gertrude. "He admires you very much, Lettice. Oh, do let us drop the
`Mistress'--it is so stiff and sober--I hate it."

"Me!" was all that it occurred to Lettice to answer.

"You. Don't you like men to admire you?"

"I don't know; they never did."

Gertrude went off into a soft explosion of silvery laughter.

"O Lettice, you are good! You have been brought up with all those
sober, starched old gentlewomen, till you don't know what life is--why,
my dear, you might as well be a nun!"

"Don't I know wha