THE PANELLED HOUSE.

261

mention disagreeable things in public; but now
you hear people talking of graves and funerals,
and deaths, as if no one had any nerves at all.”

“Well, grandmamma,” said Flora, “I suppose,
since back-boards were given up, people’s nerves
have improved, and so they don’t mind such
subjects.”

Winny came up in the pony-carriage that morn-
ing ina driving rain; and her aunts had enveloped
her in so many wraps that Colonel Armyn told
| her, as she emerged, that she looked like the fairy
wife whom some nursery hero discovered in a
walnut-shell. Winny laughed and curtseyed, and
Flora took hold of the tiny brown wrist and held
it up to view.

“You are a regular fairy godmother at least,
Winny. Look at the difference between our two
arms ;” and she bared her own—plump, white, and
shapely—and put it beside Winny’s.

“Never mind : little and good,” said-Winny.

“Tf we were in a novel, or an opera,” said
Flora, “I should be the heroine, Winny, and you
the she-villain. My contralto voice would be in
the way, though ; what a shame it is that all con-
traltos should be good for nothing.”

“Yes; it is,” said Winny, quaintly, with an odd
little smile at the corners of her mouth. ‘ Now
then, Flora, let us go to business: I have come
here to work, you know. LEscott, are you coming
to help us ?”

“Not yet,” said Escott. “I have to discover
how many pounds weight would pierce an iron
plate of a thickness of something, at an angle of
something, from a distance of something. But Pll
come as soon as I can, Winny.”

“Tf you were good at nothing else, Winny, it
would be worth having you here to keep Escott in

order.”

Winny made no reply to this observation of
Flora’s, but plunged at once into her work. Un-
willingly as she had consented to help in these
preparations, she was one of those people who
cannot do things by halves; and she had perceived
that with the cost of a little labour and study the
bare ugly dining-room had capabilities of being
decorated and made quite pretty. This involved
pink and white hangings, and festoons of ever-

greens ; but Winny, who had nimble fingers of her |

own, persuaded Flora that if they made the hang-
ings themselves, the expense would be trifling ;
whereas if they put it into the hands of an up-
holsterer there was no saying what it might come
to. After calculations had been made, and the
cost estimated, Winny had it laid before Colonel
Armyn, and, notwithstanding his dislike to useless
expenditure in the abstract, he readily consented

to Winny’s plan. So the two girls sat together in

the dining-room, with yards upon yards of pink and | unobserved. Mr. Burnet was nothi

| white calico around them, engaged with yard-
| measures and lengths of tape: Winny deciding,
/and Flora, who had no head for this sort of thing,
humbly carrying out her decisions. Only once
| they came to a little difference.

Flora suggested that a monogram consisting of
the initials E and F, and surmounted by an A,
would look well in the centre hanging.

“JY daresay it would,” said Winny, a_ little
shortly.

“Could not you manage it, Winny? Do, there’s
a dear.

“Till have nothing to do with it,” said Winny,
decidedly. ‘I’m not taking all this trouble to do
him honour.”

Happily for their mutual peace, at this moment
an interruption occurred, in the shape of Mr.
Burnet, Escott’s former tutor. His visit was to
Winny, whom he wished to see, in order to talk to
her about a protégée of hers who was a servant in
his parish, in whom they were both interested.

| Nevertheless, without detracting from Mr. Burnet’s

excellence, it may be doubted whether what he
had to say would have necessitated a two miles’
walk in drenching rain, had it not been that it was
only the day before that he had casually heard
from Flora that Winifred Williams had come home
again, and was spending her time at the Manor,
in preparation for the 6th.

Mr. Burnet was a most excellent man, a good
scholar, and gentlemanlike in manners, but un-
deniably rather dull. For this reason, possibly, it
was that Winny’s sparkling brightness had so much
effect upon him; and she, on her part, who always
found it natural to use her powers on the heaviest
and dullest of men, found Mr. Burnet more re-
sponsive than his looks would have led one to
suppose. They were excellent friends at all times,
and Winny, who was at least fifteen years his
junior, never dreamed that he could look upon her
in any other light than as the little girl she had
been when she first made his acquaintance. She
welcomed him to-day more warmly than usual, as
an opportune interruption after the words which
had slipped out of her mouth respecting Edward
Anderson*: words which a moment’s reflection made
her repent of having uttered, but which had risen
to her lips in a sudden qualm of disgust at the
thought that Edward’s monogram should have been
united to Nest’s, not to Flora’s.

The dining room, with its bright fire, and pretty
occupants, was no uninviting place to a man who
had just walked up from Erconbury in the pouring
rain. After a little small talk, Winny enlisted him
into their service ; there was plenty of measuring
to be done, and nails to be hammered in where the

_wall would hold them, and where they would be
ng loth to obey

ee eee