"Quite correct, 'm," grinned that official. "Quiet, 'Nancy,'" that being
the stable version of "Banshee."

"Let her go," said Jack, who had just tucked Mrs. Leigh in. A couple of
bounds, a smothering scream, and they disappeared in the evening gloom.

"That there old party ain't the guvener's usual form," meditated that
bât-man, as he walked back, for the cutter only carried two. "He seems to
set a deal of store by her, though. There's some young 'ooman at home,
where she lives, I'd take my dying dick."

Cecil and her father, who had seen them off, stopped laughing together
at Mrs. Leigh's peculiarities; and Bluebell, finding herself alone with
Mrs. Rolleston, felt impelled to try if she could not curtail her
sentence of banishment. Of course, her words were intended to conceal
her thoughts--love's first lesson is always hypocrisy.

"I know I am not very much use here," she began, "but still I shouldn't
like to think I was of none, and, therefore, I really don't want to stay
away more than a day or two."

A sudden look of penetration came into Mrs. Rolleston's face, and, with
more sarcasm in her voice than Bluebell's little speech appeared to
justify, she said,--

"My dear, scrupulous child, we _can_ get on without you longer than that,
so you may, with a clear conscience, think of your mother, who is dull
this dreadful weather."

Bluebell felt caught in a mesh and incapable of extricating herself, but