d them to misbehave themselves, but was worse
than any of them himself. At last he pretended to be overcome by
the heat, and went out of the room, to my great relief; but when
the passage about the early village cock came, he crew outside the
door, where he had been waiting expressly to do it. Nobody could
help laughing; and the boys screamed so that Mr. McQuinch took two
of them out by the collar. I believe he was glad of the excuse to
go out and laugh himself. George was very angry, and no wonder! He
will hardly speak to Marmaduke, who, of course, denies all
knowledge of the interruption; but George knows better. All the
Hardy McQuinches are down here. Uncle Hardy is rather stooped from
rheumatism. Nelly is now the chief personage in the family: Lydia
and Jane are nowhere beside her. They are good-humored, bouncing
girls; but they are certainly not brilliant. I hope it is not Aunt
Dora's walnut table that is broken. Was it not mean of Parson's man
to tell on Armande? I think, since you have plenty of loose cash,
we might venture on a set of those curtains we saw at Protheroe's,
for the drawing-room. I can easily use the ones that are there now
for _portieres_.

"You must not think that I have written this all at once. I shall
be able to finish to-day, as it is Sunday, and I have made an
excuse to stay away from church. George is to preach; and somehow I
never feel toward the service as I ought when he officiates. I know
you will laugh at this.

"The first part of your letter must have a paragraph
all to itself. I hardly know what to say. I could not
have believed that Mrs. Leith Fairfax would have behaved
as she has done. I was so angry at first that for
fully an hour I felt ill; and I spoke quite wickedly to
George the day after he arrived, because he said that
Sholto had better not take me down to dinner, although
his doing so was quite accidental. I know you will believe
me when I tell you that I was quite unconscious
that he had been unusually attentive to me; and I was
about to write you an indignant denial, only I shewed
Nelly your letter, and she crushed me by telling me she
had noticed it too. We nearly had a quarrel about it;
but she counted up the number of times I had danced
with him and sat beside him at dinner; and I suppose an
evil-minded woman looking on might think what Mrs.
Leith Fairfax thought. But there is no excus