eauty and fashion in smartly-cut
linen gowns and the latest thing in stocks and belts and shoes and hats
and gloves and parasols; not over-dressed in the least, but so correct,
so up-to-date, so "well-planned," Miss Bibby involuntarily drew a heavy
sigh as she looked at them.

In their turn the two young girls pleasantly patronized Miss Bibby. It
was the first time they had seen her, though they had heard of her
often, and indeed were a little anxious to meet her, for Mrs. Gowan had
teased Hugh before them, ever since the interview, about the "fair and
mysterious Miss Bibby." But this figure in its plain blue serge and its
out-of-date, if spotless, cuffs and collar! This gentle, tired face with
faint lines at the eye corners and its brown hair simply waved back from
the forehead instead of bulging out on a frame as Fashion insisted!

"We need not have been afraid," they whispered to each other.

Effie and Florence, second and third in age of the five little Gowans
and mustering some fifteen years between them, sat up on the box next
the driver and whispered together. All the way they hardly moved their
eyes from the wagonette in front, where the faces of their loved little
friends appeared and disappeared like flowers of the vapour.

The driver was an unemotional man, long used to being squeezed up on his
seat by more people than that seat was ever built to accommodate; used,
too, to having his ears filled with every sort and condition of
conversation. City men talked to each other beside him of stocks and
shares; tourists compared the views along the roads with New Zealand
views, and American ones and German and Swiss: mothers babbled of their
babies and their servants; girls whispered to girls of "Jack" and
"Jim"--lovers--and these allowed him more seat space--of love.

Why should he lend a more than quarter ear as usual to the chatter of
two little bits of girls? How should he know the demure holland frocks
beside him covered revolutionists?

Hugh started off his first party, Paul and Lynn, Muffie and Max and Miss
Bibby.

The children besought him to come, too.

"It will be just a common picnic, if you don't," Pauline said, looking
disparagingly round her family party.

Hugh promised to divide his time equally between his two sets of guests.

"Let the boys bring your basket down with the other things, Miss Bibby,"
he said, seeking to relieve her of a tiny basket she carried, "then you
will have your hands