added, in a deeper voice, drawing her nearer, "will you
accept the hunter?"

"No," answered Elsie, with _such_ an arch smile; "but I would accept the
schoolmaster if he were not going away to Canada for--"

She did not finish the sentence, because something shut her mouth.

"You're taking a _very_ long time to that shingle," called Mrs
Ravenshaw from below. "Have you got everything you want, Ian?"

"Yes," replied Ian promptly; "I've got all that the world contains."

"What's that you say?"

"It will soon be done now, mother," cried Elsie, breaking away with a
soft laugh, and hurrying down-stairs.

She was right. A few minutes sufficed to put the loose shingle to
rights, and then Ian descended to the room below.

"What a time you have been about it!" said Cora, with a suspicious
glance at the young man's face; "and how flushed you are! I had no idea
that fixing a loose shingle was such hard work."

"Oh yes, it's tremendously hard work," said Ian, recovering himself;
"you have to detach it from the roof, you know, and it is wonderful the
tenacity with which nails hold on sometimes; and then there's the
fitting of the new shingle to the--"

"Come, don't talk nonsense," said Cora; "you know that is not what kept
you. You have been telling some secret to Elsie. What was it?"

Instead of answering, Ian turned with a twinkle in his eyes, and asked
abruptly:

"By the way--when does Louis Lambert return?"

It was now Cora's turn to flush.

"I don't know," she said, bending quickly over her work; "how should _I_
know? But you have not answered my question.--Oh! look there!"

She pointed to the doorway, where a huge rat was seen seated, looking at
them as if in solemn surprise at the trifling nature of their
conversation.

Not sorry to have a reason for escaping, Ian uttered a laughing shout,
threw his cap at the creature, missed, and rushed out of the room in
chase of it. Of course he did not catch it; but, continuing his flight
down-stairs, he jumped into the punt, pushed through the passage, and
out at the front door. As he passed under the windows he looked up with
a smile, and saw Cora shaking her little fist at him.

"You have not improved in your shooting," she cried; "you missed the
rat."

"Never mind," he replied, "Lambert will fetch his rifle and hunt for it;
and, I say, Cora, ask Elsie to explain how shingles are put on. She
knows all about it."

He kissed his hand as he turned the corn