very
angry with Flushington. "Why couldn't he explain before matters had
gone on so far?"

"How was I to know?" pleaded Flushington. "I dare say I have aunts in
Australia, and you said you were one of them."

"But you asked after Uncle Samuel?" she said accusingly. "You must
have had some object--I cannot say what--in encouraging my mistake; oh,
I'm sure of it!"

"You told me to ask after him," said the unhappy Flushington; "I
thought it was all right. What else was I to do?"

The cousins were whispering and laughing together all this time and
regarding their new cousin with shy admiration, very different from the
manner in which they had looked at poor Flushington; and the old nurse,
too, was overjoyed and declared that she felt sure from the first that
her Master Frederick had not turned out so undersized as him--meaning
Flushington.

"Yes, yes," said Lushington hastily, "quite a mistake on both sides.
Quite sure Flushington isn't the man to go and intercept any fellow's
aunt."

"I wouldn't have done it for worlds, if I had known!" he protested very
sincerely.

"Well," she said, a little mollified, "I am very sorry we've all
disturbed you like this, Mr.--Mr. Flushington" (the unlucky man said
something about not minding it now); "and now, Fred, perhaps you will
show us the way to the right rooms?"

"Come along, then!" said he; "I'll run down and tell them to send up
some lunch" (they did not explain that they had lunched already). "You
come, too, Flushington, and then after lunch you and I will row the
ladies up to Byron's Pool?"

"Yes, do come, Mr. Flushington," the ladies said kindly.

But Flushington wriggled out of it. To begin with, he did not consider
he knew his neighbor sufficiently well; besides, he had had enough of
female society for one day.

Indeed, long after that, he would be careful in fastening his door
about luncheon-time, and if he saw any person in Cambridge who looked
as if she might by any possibility turn out to be a relation, he would
flee down a back street.

THE SILHOUETTES

By A. T. QUILLER-COUCH

The small round gentleman who had come all the way to Gantick village
from the extreme south of France, and had blown his flageolet all day
in Gantick street without exciting its population in the least, was
disgusted. Toward dusk he crossed the stile which divides Sanctuary
Lane from the churchyard and pausing, with a leg on each side of the
bar, shook his fist