ant, only a little
stiff. But how do you think my bonnet looked.

"Charmingly, but when are you going to have done looking in the
glass? You don't care for the buildings, I believe, a bit. Come
and look at St. Mary's; there is such a lovely light on the
steeple!"

"I'll come directly, but I must get these flowers right. I'm sure
there are too many in this trimming."

Mary was trying her new bonnet on over and over again before the
mantel-glass, and pulling out and changing the places of the
blush-rose buds with which it was trimmed. Just then a noise of
wheels, accompanied by a merry tune on a cornopean, came in from
the street.

"What's that, Katie?" she cried, stopping her work for a moment.

"A coach coming up from Magdalen Bridge. I think it is a
cricketing party coming home."

"Oh, let me see," and she tripped across to the window, bonnet in
hand, and stood beside her cousin. And, then, sure enough, a
coach covered with cricketers returning from a match drove past
the window. The young ladies looked out at first with great
curiosity; but, suddenly finding themselves the mark for a whole
coach load of male eyes, shrank back a little before the
cricketers had passed on towards the "Mitre." As the coach passed
out of sight, Mary gave a pretty toss of her head, and said--

"Well, they don't want for assurance, at any rate. I think they
needn't have stared so."

"It was our fault," said Katie; "we shouldn't have been at the
window. Besides, you know you are to be a lady-in-waiting on
Henrietta Maria up here, and of course you must get used to being
stared at."

"Oh yes, but that was to be by young gentlemen wounded in the
wars, in lace ruffles, as one sees them in pictures. That's a
very different thing from young gentlemen in flannel trousers and
straw hats, driving up the High street on coaches. I declare one
of them had the impudence to bow as if he knew you."

"So he does. That was my cousin."

"Your cousin! Ah, I remember. Then he must be my cousin, too."

"No, not at all. He is no relation of yours."

"Well I sha'n't break my heart. But is he a good partner?"

"I should say, yes. But I hardly know. We used to be a great deal
together as children, but papa has been such an invalid lately."

"Ah, I wonder how uncle is getting on at the Vice-Chancellor's.
Look, it is past eight by St. Mary's. When were we to go?"

"We were asked for nine."

"Then we must go and dress. Will it be very slow and