WONDER-LAND.


A cool evening in June, the club windows open, a clear twilight shining
over Pall Mall, and a _tete-a-tete_ dinner at a small, clean, bright
table--these are not the conditions in which a young man should show
impatience. And yet the cunning dishes which Mr. Ogilvie, who had a
certain pride in his club, though it was only one of the junior
institutions, had placed before his friend, met with but scanty
curiosity: Macleod would rather have handed questions of cookery over to
his cousin Janet. Nor did he pay much heed to his companion's sage
advice as to the sort of club he should have himself proposed at, with a
view to getting elected in a dozen or fifteen years. A young man is apt
to let his life at forty shift for itself.

"You seem very anxious to see Miss White again," said Mr. Ogilvie, with
a slight smile.

"I wish to make all the friends I can while I am in London," said
Macleod. "What shall I do in this howling wilderness when you go back to
Aldershot?"

"I don't think Miss Gertrude White will be of much use to you. Colonel
Ross may be. Or Lord Beauregard. But you cannot expect young ladies to
take you about."

"No?" said Macleod, gravely; "that is a great pity."

Mr. Ogilvie, who, with all his knowledge of the world, and of wines and