lady,
bridling. "The best way would be to ask him to come into the
drawing-room and hand him a little refreshment--a glass of wine and a
biscuit."

"But you forget that we are living in a cottage now. The inspector will
be staying with Mr Lambent and he will get what refreshment--"

"Hazel, don't be obstinate. I know what I am saying. Oh no, I don't
forget that I am living in a mean and sordid cottage with contemptible
windows," she cried, with an irritating shake of the head, and a
querulous ring in her voice that jarred to Hazel's heart. "I know that
this room is merely what you call a parlour by construction; but the
fact of your mother--_your_ mother occupying it, my child, makes it a
drawing-room. You will put on your silk dress, Hazel?"

"No, mother; I am going to put on the clean grasscloth," said Hazel
quietly. "The other would be unsuitable for the school, and the dark
silk would show the dust and chalk."

"Was ever woman troubled with such a wilful girl before!" moaned Mrs
Thorne. "Oh, dear me!--oh, _dea_-ar me!"

She declined to be comforted, and Hazel remained obstinate absolutely
refusing to go to the school in silk attire, but wearing an extremely
simple, closely-fitting, grasscloth dress, with plain white collar and
cuffs, and looking dreadful--so Miss Lambent afterwards said to her
sister; a prejudiced statement, for if ever there was an exemplification
of the proverb regarding the needlessness of foreign ornament it was in
Hazel Thorne's appearance that day.

As a rule she was disposed to be pale, but the excitement consequent
upon the important event had brought the colour into her cheeks, and she
looked brighter than she had for months.

Mr Chute's flowers were on the sills of the windows, the room had been
well sprinkled and swept, there was not a vestige of a cobweb to be
seen, and the girls had assembled in strong force, there having been a
theory in the school that an inspection meant tea and cake afterwards, a
theory that Feelier Potts, basing her remarks on experience, strongly
opposed; but the children mustered all the same, and in many cases
suffering a good deal from hair oil, applied so that patches of their
foreheads shone and invited comparison with the rest of their faces.

Mr William Forth Burge was one of the first arrivals, and he paused
with his sister upon the doorstep, to unfold a clean orange silk
handkerchief, and have a loud blow, like a knight of old seizing the