"Selina, dear."

"Then will you kindly give Selina a month's notice on the spot?
Do you hear? On the spot--What's that?"

The Admiral rushed to the window and pulled up the blind. He was
just in time to see a close carriage and pair dash past and pull up
at "The Bower."

A moment afterwards, Miss Limpenny, from the first-storey window of
No. 1, saw the carriage door open, and a tall gentleman emerge.
The tall gentleman was followed by a lady, whom even at that distance
Miss Limpenny could see to possess a remarkably graceful figure.
A small youth in livery sprang down from beside the coachman and
helped to lower the boxes, whilst the new arrivals passed into the
house where the charwoman, Mrs. Snell, stood smearing her face with
her apron, and ducking in frenzied welcome.

The Honourable Frederic Augustus Hythe Goodwyn-Sandys and his wife,
instead of arriving by train, had posted from Five-Lanes Junction.

There was no public demonstration. They might as well have come in
the dead of night. Miss Limpenny was almost the sole witness of
their arrival, and Miss Limpenny's observations were cut short by a
terrible occurrence.

She had taken stock of the Honourable Frederic, and pronounced him
"aristocratic-looking"; of the Honourable Mrs. Frederic's
travelling-dress, and decided it to be _Cumeelfo_; she had counted
the boxes twice, and made them seven each time; she was about to