lds in their heads, and one year they gave every one mumps, so they
were not asked the next. The altar-cloth one, Jean, is my age, the other
three are older.

It was really very difficult to find something to say, and I can quite
understand common people fidgeting when they feel worried like this. I
have never fidgeted since eight years ago, the last time Mrs. Carruthers
boxed my ears for it. Just before going up to dress for dinner Mr.
Montgomerie asked blank out if it was true that Mr. Carruthers had
arrived. Lady Katherine had been skirting round this subject for a quarter
of an hour.

I only said yes, but that was not enough, and, once started, he asked a
string of questions, with "Burrrr" several times in between. Was Mr.
Carruthers going to shoot the pheasants in November? Had he decided to
keep on the chef? Had he given up diplomacy? I said I really did not know
any of these things, I had seen so little of him.

Lady Katherine nodded her head, while she measured a comforter she was
knitting, to see if it was long enough.

"I am sure it must have been most awkward for you, his arriving at all; it
was not very good taste on his part, I am afraid, but I suppose he wished
to see his inheritance as soon as possible," she said.

I nearly laughed, thinking what she would say if she knew which part of
his inheritance he had really come to see. I do wonder if she has ever
heard that Mrs. Carruthers left me to him, more or less, in her will!

"I hope you had your old governess with you, at least," she continued, as
we went up the stairs, "so that you could feel less uncomfortable--really
a most shocking situation for a girl alone in the house with an unmarried
man!"

I told her Mr. Barton was there, too, but I had not the courage to say
anything about Lord Robert; only that Mr. Carruthers had a friend of his
down who was a great judge of pictures, to see them.

"Oh, a valuer, I suppose. I hope he is not going to sell the Correggios,"
she exclaimed.

"No, I don't think so," I said, leaving the part about the valuer
unanswered.

Mr. Carruthers's being unmarried seemed to worry her most; she went on
about it again before we got to my bedroom door.

"I happened to hear a rumor at Miss Sheriton's" (the wool-shop in
Headington, our town) "this morning," she said, "and so I wrote at once to
you. I felt how terrible it would be for one of my own dear girls to be
left alone with a bachelor like that. I almost wonder yo