things you've forgotten, and he gives you rides on his horse, and
everything. He's really _much_ better than that horrid Howie, and he
does so want to get a piano for Blanch and Emma, and buy out Octavius
and Septimus, and put his mother in, because she works too hard on the
farm. You will deal with him, won't you?"

By dint of a few questions Hugh put himself in possession of the facts,
and found out that his visitors were also his nearest neighbours. He
discovered, too, that he would have been called upon by the whole
quartet, but that it had been considered, in family conclave, that four
was perhaps too great a number for a morning call. And further, it was
necessary for Miss Bibby to see some figures about the garden. So the
question was solved by drawing lots, which fell, greatly to the disgust
of Pauline and Muffie, to Lynn and Max.

"I _know_ you'll go and spoil it all," said Pauline. "I could do it so
much better."

So Lynn was on her mettle and fought hard in Larkin's cause.

"I tell you what we'll do," said Hugh, struck with a brilliant idea,
"you shall come with me, and we'll go straight up to this Larkin's. You
have made me feel that I can exist no longer without some of the prime,
middle cuts of his bacon at elevenpence."

"Oh," said Lynn, "Miss Bibby!" She was torn between Larkin and duty.

"Oh, of course, we'll go and ask permission first," said Hugh; "and we
might leave Trike behind, eh, Max? After a feed like that he'll want a
rest."

Away they went out of the gate and across the road.

Miss Bibby was down at the gate, fluttering with vexation. She had just
found out that two of her naughty charges had actually dared to go and
trouble the sacred peace of the famous novelist, and before he could
have breakfasted!

She positively could hardly keep the tears back.

CHAPTER VI

A GROCERY ORDER

Miss Bibby had been awake nearly all the night, her blood at fever
heat.

Hugh Kinross a stone's-throw away! Hugh Kinross, the author of _Liars
All_, and _In the Teeth of the World_, and other books, that had
thrilled her and set her nerves tingling as if a whip had been applied
to her back!

No book had ever so agitated her as _Liars All_. And she had paid it the
highest compliment in her power--she had flung aside her political
novel, and the historical one that she had been touching up, and the
detective tale that she had been copying afresh, and she had started
feverishly upon a short