ly likely to
recommend his nephew so highly if he were not pretty good."

"But you don't know the puppy, Katherine."

My heart fell.

"That is not the least consequence; we are almost related. Merrenden is
my first cousin, you forget that, I suppose!"

Fortunately I could detect that Lady Katherine was becoming obstinate
and offended. I drank some more coffee. Oh, how lovely if Lord Robert
comes!

Mr. Montgomerie "burrred" a lot first, but Lady Katherine got him round,
and before breakfast was over it was decided she should write to Lord
Robert and ask him to come to the shoot. As we were all standing looking
out of the window at the dripping rain, I heard her say, in a low voice:

"Really, Anderson, we must think of the girls sometimes. Torquilstone is
a confirmed bachelor and a cripple--Lord Robert will certainly one day
be duke."

"Well, catch him if you can," said Mr. Montgomerie. He is coarse
sometimes.

I am not going to let myself think much about Lord Robert. Mr.
Carruthers has been a lesson to me. But if he does come, I wonder if
Lady Katherine will think it funny of me not saying I knew him when she
first spoke of him. It is too late now, so it can't be helped.

The Mackintosh party arrived this afternoon. Marriage must have quite
different effects on some people. Numbers of the married women we saw in
London were lovely--prettier, I always heard, than they had been
before--but Mary Mackintosh is perfectly awful. She can't be more than
twenty-seven, but she looks forty, at least; and stout, and sticking out
all in the wrong places, and flat where the stick-outs ought to be. And
the four children. The two eldest look much the same age, the next a
little smaller, and there is a baby, and they all squall, and although
they seem to have heaps of nurses, poor Mr. Mackintosh has to be a kind
of under one. He fetches and carries for them, and gives his
handkerchief when they slobber, but perhaps it is he feels proud that a
person of his size had these four enormous babies almost all at once
like that.

The whole thing is simply dreadful.

Tea was a pandemonium! The four aunts gushing over the infants, and
feeding them with cake, and gurgling with "tootsie-wootsie popsy-wopsy"
kind of noises. They will get to do "burrrrs," I am sure, when they get
older. I wonder if the infants will come down every afternoon when the
shoot happens. The guests will enjoy it.

I said to Jean as we came up-stairs that I t