s eagerness to get rid of your
daughters. It reflects badly upon your bringing-up of them, ma'am."

"Oh no, papa; how can you say so? It speaks well for mamma's happiness
in her married life."

"I see Charles hasn't cured you of your pertness yet, miss--ma'am, I
should say. Poor fellow! I wonder if I ought to have told him what he
was bringing upon himself?"

Justice demanded that Marian should immediately rise and pull her
father's hair, but in the middle of the operation she paused
tragically. "Something has just struck me," she said. "Why do we all
take it for granted that Honour must end by marrying one of these two
men? It may be some one we have never thought of that she really cares
for."

"My dear, don't imagine fresh complications," said her mother in alarm.
"All the available young men have proposed, so that she could have had
any one she liked."

"Perhaps she was afraid of her cruel father," suggested Mrs Cowper,
deftly arranging Sir Arthur's hair into a curl in the middle of his
forehead. "Don't touch that, papa, whatever you do. I want Charley to
see it; it will give him a new view of your character. Of course it is
the persistence of these two men that makes you feel that one of them
is fated to succeed. Others come and others go, but they go on for
ever."

"Perhaps it would be as well to forbid them both the house," suggested
her victimised father.

"Not both at once, papa! Why, neither we nor Honour should ever know
which was the right one, if they were both shut out together. You must
do it in turn."

"And after making one welcome for a week or so, pick a quarrel with him
and install the other? Precious undignified, my dear child, but a man
must make sacrifices for the sake of his family."

"Ah, but that's just what you don't do!" cried Marian, roused to
recollection of a grievance of her own. "How could you all but promise
Charley that if a peaceful mission was sent to Agpur, he should command
the escort?"

"But surely, my dear, I was sacrificing my own comfort in promising to
spare him?"

"No, you were sacrificing me!" pouted his daughter. "I was making
signs to you the whole time, not to let him go unless he would take me
with him, and he won't. He has been horrid about it."

"My dear Marian, you could not possibly go, with the hot weather coming
on!" cried her mother, aghast.

"Nor in any weather whatever," said Sir Arthur firmly. "Your signals
were lost on me, M