leasure.

'_How--would--you--like_--him for a brother-in-law?' she inquired,
beginning in a whisper, with slow emphasis, patting Rose's arm, and
bringing out the last words with a rush.

'Agnes caught the twinkle in Rose's eye, but she answered for them both
demurely.

'We have no objection to entertain the idea. But you must explain.'

'Explain!' cried Mrs. Thornburgh. 'I should think it explains itself. At
least if you'd been in this house for the last twenty-four hours you'd
think so. Since the moment when he first met her, it's been "Miss
Leyburn," "Miss Leyburn," all the time. One might have seen it with half
an eye from the beginning.

Mrs. Thornburgh had not seen it with two eyes, as we know, till it was
pointed out to her; but her imagination worked with equal liveliness
backward or forward.

'He went to see you yesterday, didn't he--yes, I know he did--and he
overtook her in the pony-carriage--the vicar saw them from across
the valley--and he brought her back from your house, and then he kept
William up till nearly twelve talking of her. And now he wants a picnic.
Oh, it's plain as a pikestaff. And, my dears, _nothing_ to be said
against him. Fifteen hundred a year if he's a penny. A nice living, only
his mother to look after, and as good a young fellow as ever, stepped.'

Mrs. Thornburgh stopped, choked almost by her own eloquence. The girls,
who had by this time established her between them on a garden-seat,
looked at her with smiling composure. They were accustomed to letting
her have her budget out.

'And now, of course,' she resumed, taking breath, and chilled a little
by their silence, 'now, of course, I want to know about Catherine?' She
regarded them with anxious interrogation. Rose, still smiling, slowly
shook her head.

'What!' cried Mrs. Thornburgh; then, with charming inconsistency, 'Oh,
you can't know anything in two days.'

'That's just it,' said Agnes, intervening; 'we can't know anything in
two days. No one ever will know anything about Catherine, if she takes
to anybody, till the list minute.'

Mrs. Thornburgh's face fell. 'It's very difficult 'when people will be
so reserved,' she said, dolefully.

The girls acquiesced, but intimated that they saw no way out of it.

'At any rate we can bring them together,' she broke out, brightening
again. 'We can have picnics, you know, and teas, and all that--and
watch. Now listen.'

And the vicar's wife sketched out a programme of festivi