anything long beforehand, it is apt to pall on the palate when it
arrives within your reach. "Unlooked-for blessings" are generally twice
as grateful as those which you are led to expect--so, at least, I have
found them.

On my return home from a walk in the evening, I found a little note of
invitation awaiting me, in which Miss Pimpernell requested me to come
round to the vicarage precisely at eight, "dressed all in my best," like
the impassioned lover of "Sally in our Alley," as she "expected a few
friends." She added in a postscript, underlined with one of her
characteristic dashes, that _Miss Clyde_ would be there, if that would
be any further inducement for me.

Oh Miss Pimpernell, you machiavellian old lady! I would not have
thought you could have practised such great dissimulation. Would Min's
presence be any further inducement to me! Wouldn't it? Oh, dear no,
certainly not!

In ten minutes' time I was dressed en regle and at the vicarage.

It was quite a nice little party. Not one too many, and not a single
discordant element. Old ladies and gentlemen seemed to have been
rigidly tabooed, with the exception, naturally, of our host and hostess,
the vicar and his sister; for Lady Dasher, owing to some fortunate
conjuncture of circumstances, was unable to come: Miss Spight was busy
at home, entertaining an elderly relative who had suddenly thrown
herself on her hospitality; while Mr Mawley was at Oxford enjoying the
season with sundry dogmatic Fellows of his own calibre. Minus these
charmers, our gathering was pretty much what it had been down in the old
school-room at the decorations. There were the Dasher girls, two young
collegians from Cambridge--ex-pupils of the vicar--to entertain Bessie
and Seraphine, Lizzie Dangler, Horner with his inseparable eye-glass and
faultless toilet, Baby Blake for _his_ entertainment--Miss Pimpernell
was a wise caterer--Min, and myself.

Our hostess had so planned that we should all pair off, each lady having
her cavalier, as she said, in the good old-fashioned way. She planned
very ably, as we had one of the pleasantest evenings imaginable, without
any stiffness or formality or being forced to make a toil of enjoyment,
in the customary manner of most fashionable reunions: we were not
"fashionable," thank goodness. But we had "a good time" of it, as young
America says, all the same.

What did we do?

Well, then, there were none of those abominable "round games,