"How amused every one would be if they knew what really happened,"
said Louisa Mebbin a few days after the ball.

"What do you mean?" asked Mrs. Packletide quickly.

"How you shot the goat and frightened the tiger to death," said
Miss Mebbin, with her disagreeably pleasant laugh.

"No one would believe it," said Mrs. Packletide, her face changing
colour as rapidly as though it were going through a book of
patterns before post-time.

"Loona Bimberton would," said Miss Mebbin. Mrs. Packletide's face
settled on an unbecoming shade of greenish white.

"You surely wouldn't give me away?" she asked.

"I've seen a week-end cottage near Dorking that I should rather
like to buy," said Miss Mebbin with seeming irrelevance. "Six
hundred and eighty, freehold. Quite a bargain, only I don't
happen to have the money."

. . . . . . . . .

Louisa Mebbin's pretty week-end cottage, christened by her "Les
Fauves," and gay in summertime with its garden borders of tiger-
lilies, is the wonder and admiration of her friends.

"It is a marvel how Louisa manages to do it," is the general
verdict.