with pleasure--me and him don't get on
over and above well."

"Perhaps he wouldn't do it," objected the farmer.

"He'd do it like a shot," said Mr. Cray, positively. "It would be fun
for us and it 'ud be a lesson for her. If you like, I'll tell him to
write to you for lodgings, as he wants to come for a fortnight's fresh
air after the fatiguing gayeties of town."

"Fatiguing gayeties of town," repeated the admiring farmer.
"Fatiguing--"

He sat back in his chair and laughed, and Mr. Cray, delighted at the
prospect of getting rid so easily of a tiresome guest, laughed too.
Overhead at the open window a third person laughed, but in so quiet and
well-bred a fashion that neither of them heard her.

The farmer received a letter a day or two afterwards, and negotiations
between Jane Rose on the one side and Lord Fairmount on the other were
soon in progress; the farmer's own composition being deemed somewhat
crude for such a correspondence.

"I wish he didn't want it kept so secret," said Miss Rose, pondering
over the final letter. "I should like to let the Crays and one or two
more people know he is staying with us. However, I suppose he must have
his own way."

"You must do as he wishes," said her father, using his handkerchief
violently.

Jane sighed. "He'll be a little company for me, at any rate," she
remarked. "What is the matter, father?"

"Bit of a cold," said the farmer, indistinctly, as he made for the door,
still holding his handkerchief to his face. "Been coming on some time."

He put on his hat and went out, and Miss Rose, watching him from the
window, was not without fears that the joke might prove too much for a
man of his habit. She regarded him thoughtfully, and when he returned
at one o'clock to dinner, and encountered instead a violent dust-storm
which was raging in the house, she noted with pleasure that his sense of
humor was more under control.

"Dinner?" she said, as he strove to squeeze past the furniture which was
piled in the hall. "We've got no time to think of dinner, and if we had
there's no place for you to eat it. You'd better go in the larder and
cut yourself a crust of bread and cheese."

Her father hesitated and glared at the servant, who, with her head bound
up in a duster, passed at the double with a broom. Then he walked slowly
into the kitchen.

Miss Rose called out something after him..

"Eh?" said her father, coming back hopefully.

"How is your cold, dear?"

The fa