nd then, and let us know how you are getting
on in this dear little place."

"Really," returned Mrs. Rolleston, smiling, no _arriere pensee_ having
struck her,--"I more depend on hearing from you. Bluebell can write her
fishing experiences, and how often they have tea on the islands; but all
I expect to do is to travel over a good deal of my point-lace flounce
before you return."

While Cecil went away to put on her travelling dress, as sometimes
happens, the true bearing of the speech flashed on her; and when her
step-daughter returned, arrayed _en voyageuse_, Mrs. Rolleston
considerately remarked,--"How dull I shall be without you! I think I'll
write to Bertie;" and the quick, grateful glance of intelligence in
Cecil's eyes encouraged her to say much more in that letter than she
would otherwise have done.

CHAPTER XIX.

CALF LOVE.

I gat my death frae twa sweet een,
Twa lovely een o' bonnie blue;
'Twas not her golden ringlets bright,
Her lips like roses wet wi' dew--
Her graceful bosom lily white--
It was her een sae bonnie blue.
--Scotch Song.

The arrival of the Rolleston family created a good deal of interest in
the limited society of the lake, and not entirely of a friendly nature.
Needless to say, the adolescent members of it were all more or less
engaged to each other, which, being rather the result of propinquity than
uncontrollable preference, the maidens noticed with angry surprise the
admiration excited in the bosoms of their swains by the apparition of
Bluebell on their hitherto uninvaded waters. Alec Gough and Bernard
Lumley, both morally placarded "engaged," having, as a matter of course,
plighted their troth to two neighbouring fledglings, were wild for an
introduction; and no sooner did Bluebell's canoe leave Lyndon's Landing,
than two corresponding ones were sure to shoot out, apparently actuated
by the same persuasion that there was no more likely place for a fish
than the snag round which she was trolling, and ready to gaff a
maskinonge, or help to land an obdurate bass, if occasion offered.

Any such incident might have commenced an acquaintance, were it not that
Miss Prosody, with a boatful of children, was never far off, and had a
scaring and terrifying effect.

Bluebell rather despised very young men. Still, she was not insensible to
admiration, and was quite aware of these two young aborigines following
in her wake as surely as a gull in th