dinner was in. Tynn carried this item of information to Mrs. Verner. It
did not please her.

"Of course!" she grumbled. "Let me want any one of you particularly, and
you are sure to be away! If she did go out, she ought not to stay as
long as this. Who's this coming in?"

It was Frederick Massingbird. He entered, singing a scrap of a song;
which was cut suddenly short when his eye fell on the servant.

"Tynn," said he, "you must bring me something to eat. I have had no
dinner."

"You cannot be very hungry, or you'd have come in before," remarked Mrs.
Verner to him. "It is tea-time now."

"I'll take tea and dinner together," was his answer.

"But you ought to have been in before," she persisted; for, though an
easy mistress and mother, Mrs. Verner did not like the order of meals to
be displaced. "Where have you stayed, Fred? You have not been all this
while taking Sibylla West to Bitterworth's."

"You must talk to Sibylla West about that," answered Fred. "When young
ladies keep you a good hour waiting, while they make themselves ready to
start, you can't get back precisely to your own time."

"What did she keep you waiting for?" questioned Mrs. Verner.

"Some mystery of the toilette, I conclude. When I got there, Amilly said