look as cross and ill-natured as a bear! She
turned in an apologetic fashion to Rosalind, and tried to resume the
conversation at the point where it had been interrupted by Peggy's
entrance.

"And I was saying, we have ever so many new things to show you--
presents, you know, and things of that kind. The last is the nicest of
all: a really good big camera with which we can take proper photographs.
Mrs Saville--Peggy's mother--gave it to us before she left. It was a
present to the schoolroom, so it belongs equally to us all, and we have
such fun with it. We are beginning to do some good things now, but at
first they were too funny for anything. There is one of father where
his boots are twice as large as his head, and another of mother where
her face has run, and is about a yard long, and yet it is so like her!
We laughed till we cried over it, and father has locked it away in his
desk. He says he will keep it to look at when he is low-spirited."

Rosalind gave a shrug to her shapely shoulders.

"It would not cheer me up to see a cawicature of myself! I don't think
I shall sit to you for my portrait, if that is the sort of thing you do,
but you shall show me all your failures. It will amuse me. You will
have to come up and see me vewwy often this winter, for I shall be so
dull. We have been abroad for the last four years, and England seems so
dark and dweawy. Last winter we were at Cairo. We lived in a big
hotel, and there was something going on almost every night. I was not
out, of course, but I was allowed to go into the room for an hour after
dinner, and to dance with the gentlemen in mother's set. And we went up
the Nile in a steamer, and dwove about every afternoon, paying calls,
and shopping in the bazaars. It never rains in Cairo, and the sun is
always shining. It seems so wonderful! Just like a place in a fairy
tale." She looked at Peggy as she spoke, and that young person smiled
with an air of elegant condescension.

"It would do so to you. Naturally it would. When one has been born in
the East, and lived there the greater part of one's life, it seems
natural enough, but the trippers from England who just come out for a
few months' visit are always astonished. It used to amuse us so much to
hear their remarks!"

Rosalind stared, and flushed with displeasure. She was accustomed to
have her remarks treated with respect, and the tone of superiority was a
new and unpleasing experience.