direction of the plate of scones; the girls failed to reach it, and Oswald, twitching it from Robert's hands, jerked half the contents on the table, and had to pick them up, while Miss Saville looked on with a smile of indulgent superiority.

"Accidents will happen, will they not?" she said sweetly, as she lifted a scone from the plate, with her little finger cocked well in the air, and nibbled it daintily between her small, white teeth. "A most delicious cake! Home-made, I presume? Perhaps of your own concoction?"

Esther muttered an inarticulate assent, and once more the conversation languished. She looked appealingly at Maxwell. As the son of the house, the eldest of the boys, it was his place to take the lead, but Maxwell looked the picture of awkward embarrassment. He did not suffer from bashfulness as a rule, but since Peggy Saville had come into the room he had been seized with an appalling self-consciousness. His feet felt in the way, his arms seemed too long for practical purposes, his elbows had a way of invading other people's precincts, and his hands looked red and clammy. It occurred to him dimly that he was not a man after all, but only a big, overgrown schoolboy, and that little Miss Saville knew as much, and was mildly pitiful of his shortcomings. He was not at all anxious to attract the attention of the sharp little tongue, so he passed on the signal to Mellicent, kicking her foot under the table, and frowning vigorously in the direction of the stranger.

"Er," began Mellicent, amicably anxious to respond to the signal, but lamentably short of ideas, "Er, Peggy! Are you fond of sums? I'm in decimals. Do you like fractions? I think they are hateful. I could do vulgars pretty well, but decimals are fearful. They never come right. So awfully difficult."

"Patience and perseverance overcome all difficulties. Keep up your courage; I'll help you with them, dear," said Peggy encouragingly, closing her eyes the while, and coughing in a faint and ladylike manner.

She could not really be only fourteen, Mellicent reflected. She talked as if she were quite grown up—older than Esther, seventeen or eighteen at the very least. What a little white face she had; what a great, thick plait of hair. How erect she held herself. Fraulein would never have to rebuke her new pupil for stooping shoulders. It was kind of her to promise help with those troublesome decimals! Quite too good an offer to refuse.

"Thank you very much," she said heartily, "I'll show you some after tea. Perhaps you may be able to make me understand better than Fraulein. It's very good of you, P——" A quick change of expression warned her that something was wrong, and she checked herself to add hastily, "You want to be called 'Peggy,' don't you? No? Then what must we call you? What is your real name?"

"Mariquita!" sighed the damsel pensively, "after my grandmother—Spanish. A beautiful and unscrupulous woman at the court of Philip the Second." She said "unscrupulous" with an air of pride, as though it had been "virtuous," or some other word of a similar meaning, and pronounced the name of the king with a confidence that made Robert gasp.

"Philip the Second? Surely not? He was the husband of our Mary—1572. That would make it just a trifle too far back for your grandmother, wouldn't it?" he inquired sceptically, but Mariquita remained absolutely unperturbed.

"It must have been someone else then, I suppose. How clever of you to remember! I see you know something about history," she said suavely, a remark which caused an amused glance to pass between the young people, for Robert had a craze for history of all description, and had serious thought of becoming a second Carlyle so soon as his college course was over.

Maxwell put his handkerchief to his mouth to stifle a laugh, and kicked out vigorously beneath the table, with the intention of sharing his amusement with his friend Oswald. It seemed, however, that he had aimed amiss, for Mariquita fell back in her chair, and laid her hand on her heart.

"I think there must be some slight misunderstanding. That's my foot that you are kicking. I cut it very badly on the ice last winter, and the least touch causes acute suffering. Please don't apologise; it doesn't matter in the least," and she rolled her eyes to the ceiling like one in mortal agony.

It was the last straw. Maxwell's embarrassment had reached such a pitch that he could bear no more. He murmured some unintelligible words and bolted from the room, and the other two boys lost no time in following his example.

In subsequent conversations, Mellicent always referred to this occasion as "the night when Robert had one cup," it being, in truth, the only occasion since this young gentleman entered the vicarage when he had neglected to patronise the teapot three or four times in succession.

(To be continued.)