the hearth, though it was rather a warm day without, for the sake of the
effect. She was sitting in the chimney-seat, and shielding her face from
the blaze with an old-fashioned feather hand-screen.

"Now don't you think we have a lovely little home?" she demanded.

Mrs. Munger began to break out in its praise, but she shook the screen
silencingly at her.

"No, no! I want Miss Kilburn's unbiassed opinion. Don't you speak, Mrs.
Munger! Now haven't we?"

Mrs. Brandreth made Annie assent to the superiority of her cottage in
detail. She recapitulated the different facts of the architecture and
furnishing, from each of which she seemed to acquire personal merit, and
she insisted that Percy should show some of them again. "We think it's a
little picture," she concluded, and once more Annie felt obliged to murmur
her acquiescence.

At last Mrs. Munger said that she must go to lunch, and was going to take
Annie with her; Annie said she must lunch at home; and then Mrs. Brandreth
pressed them both to stay to lunch with her. "You shall have a cup of tea
out of a piece of real Satsuma," she said; but they resisted. "I don't
believe," she added, apparently relieved by their persistence, and losing a
little anxiety of manner, "that Percy's had any chance to consult you on a
very important point about your theatricals, Miss Kilburn."

"Oh, that will do some other time, mother," said Mr. Brandreth.

"No, no! Now! And you can have Mrs. Munger's opinion too. You know Miss Sue