t be disappointed."

"Ridiculous! I shall wear just what I wore yesterday, bow and all, for I
like it," Bessie said, with a little defiant toss of her head.

She, too, had been thinking while Neil sat so silent and moody by the
fire, and had decided that he had greatly changed for the worse since
she had seen him last--that he was hard to please, moody, exacting, and
quite too much given to criticising her and her dress.

"As if it is any of his business what I wear," she thought, and she took
a kind of exultant satisfaction in fastening on the knot of ribbon he
had condemned and which really was very becoming to her plain, dark
dress.

"I suppose, Mr. Grey Jerrold, I must waste a clean collar and a pair of
cuffs on you, though that will be so much more for me to iron next
week," she said, as she stood before the mirror in her room, which was
to be given to the coming guest, "I hope, sir, you will appreciate all I
am doing for you, for I assure you it is no small matter to turn out
from my comfortable quarters into that barn of a room where the wind
blows a hurricane and the rats scurry over the floor. Ugh! how I dread
it, and _you_, too!" she continued, shaking her head at the imaginary
Grey, who stood before her mind's eye, black-eyed, black-whiskered,
black-faced, and a very giant in proportions, as she fancied all
Americans to be.

Her toilet completed, she removed from the room everything which she
thought would betray the fact that it was her apartment, and carried
them with a shiver to the chamber facing the north, where the rats
scurried over the floor at night, and the wind blew a hurricane.

"There! I am ready for your Pythias! Do you think I shall pass muster?"
she said to Neil, as she entered the dining-room where he was sitting.

It would indeed have been a very censorious, fault-finding man who could
have seen aught amiss in the beautiful young girl, plain as her dress
might be, and for answer to her question, Neil stood up and kissed her,
saying as he did so:

"He will think you perfect, though I don't like the ribbon, I don't like
any color about you except your hair and eyes. I wish you would take it
off."

"Mr. Jerrold may think differently. I am dressed for him, and as I like
it I mean to wear it," Bessie answered, curtly, but with a bright smile,
as she looked into Neil's face.

"Oh, well; _chacun a son gout_," he said, consulting his watch, and
adding: "It is time I was starting for the