m. I'll emigrate
to the western woods."

Louis Moore laughed.

"To marry a White Cloud or a Big Buffalo, and after wedlock to devote
yourself to the tender task of digging your lord's maize-field while he
smokes his pipe or drinks fire-water."

Shirley seemed about to reply, but here the schoolroom door unclosed,
admitting Mr. Sympson. That personage stood aghast when he saw the group
around the fire.

"I thought you alone, Miss Keeldar," he said. "I find quite a party."

And evidently from his shocked, scandalized air, had he not recognized
in one of the party a clergyman, he would have delivered an extempore
philippic on the extraordinary habits of his niece: respect for the
cloth arrested him.

"I merely wished to announce," he proceeded coldly, "that the family
from De Walden Hall, Mr., Mrs., the Misses, and Mr. Sam Wynne, are in
the drawing-room." And he bowed and withdrew.

"The family from De Walden Hall! Couldn't be a worse set," murmured
Shirley.

She sat still, looking a little contumacious, and very much indisposed
to stir. She was flushed with the fire. Her dark hair had been more than
once dishevelled by the morning wind that day. Her attire was a light,
neatly fitting, but amply flowing dress of muslin; the shawl she had
worn in the garden was still draped in a careless fold round her.
Indolent, wilful, picturesque, and singularly pretty was her
aspect--prettier than usual, as if some soft inward emotion, stirred who
knows how, had given new bloom and expression to her features.

"Shirley, Shirley, you ought to go," whispered Caroline.

"I wonder why?"

She lifted her eyes, and saw in the glass over the fireplace both Mr.
Hall and Louis Moore gazing at her gravely.

"If," she said, with a yielding smile--"if a majority of the present
company maintain that the De Walden Hall people have claims on my
civility, I will subdue my inclinations to my duty. Let those who think
I ought to go hold up their hands."

Again consulting the mirror, it reflected an unanimous vote against her.

"You must go," said Mr. Hall, "and behave courteously too. You owe many
duties to society. It is not permitted you to please only yourself."

Louis Moore assented with a low "Hear, hear!"

Caroline, approaching her, smoothed her wavy curls, gave to her attire a
less artistic and more domestic grace, and Shirley was put out of the
room, protesting still, by a pouting lip, against her dismissal.

"There is a curi