holding out a hand to her;
'if Miss Barks were ever pretty she must have looked like you at this
moment.'

'I won't have Chattie put upon,' said Agnes, establishing herself at the
other side of the little tea-table; 'she has done you no harm. Come to
me, beastie. I won't compare you to disagreeable old maids.'

The cat looked from one sister to the other, blinking; then with a
sudden magnificent spring leaped on to Agnes's lap and curled herself up
there.

'Nothing but cupboard love,' said Rose scornfully, in answer to Agnes's
laugh; 'she knows you will give her bread and butter and I won't, out
of a double regard for my skirts and her morals. Oh, dear me! Miss Barks
was quite seraphic last night; she never made a single remark about my
clothes, and she didn't even say to me as she generally does, with an
air of compassion, that she "quite understands how hard it must be to
keep in tune."'

'The amusing thing was Mrs. Seaton and Mr. Elsmere,' said Agnes. 'I just
love, as Mrs. Thornburgh says, to hear her instructing other people in
their own particular trades. She didn't get much change out of him.'

Rose gave Agnes her tea, and then, bending forward, with one hand on her
heart, said in a stage whisper, with a dramatic glance round the garden,
'My heart is whole. How is yours?'

'_Intact_,' said Agnes, calmly, as that French bric-a-brac man in the
Brompton Road used to say of his pots. But he is very nice.'

'Oh, charming! But when my destiny arrives'-and Rose, returning to her
tea, swept her little hand with a teaspoon in it eloquently round-'he
won't have his hair cut close. I must have luxuriant locks, and I will
take _no_ excuse! _Une chevelure de poete_, the eye of an eagle, the
moustache of a hero, the hand of a Rubinstein, and, if it pleases him,
the temper of a fiend. He will be odious, insufferable for all the world
besides, except for me; and for me he will be heaven.'

She threw herself back, a twinkle in her bright eye, but a little flush
of something half real on her cheek.

'No doubt,' said Agnes, dryly. 'But you can't wonder if under the
circumstances I don't pine for a brother-in-law. To return to the
subject, however, Catherine liked him. She said so.'

'Oh, that doesn't count,' replied Rose, discontentedly. Catherine likes
everybody--of a certain sort--and everybody likes Catherine.'

'Does that mean, Miss Hasty,' said her sister, 'that you have made up
your mind Catherine will never marry