All through the earlier part of the day this curious depression seemed to hang over Mildred's spirits. At every quiet opportunity she whispered an eager "Are you enjoying yourself?" into her friend's ear; "You are enjoying yourself, aren't you, Bertha?" but it was not until lunch was laid out upon the grass, and the merry scramble for knives and forks had begun, that she herself seemed able to enter into the fun with a whole heart. From that time onward she was her own merry self, and Bertha had the pleasure of seeing her prophecy fulfilled, for before the afternoon was over, Mildred, in her old blue dress and renovated hat, had become the principal personage in the party. The ladies were charmed with her because she was so pretty, and had such winsome, coaxing little ways; the gentlemen, because she was a thorough school-girl, free from every trace of young-ladyish affectation. It delighted them to see her race up the hillsides, or skip from rock to rock across the river bed, and when the time came for the return drive, there was quite a struggle for the seat by her side in the coach. The gentleman who gained it was, in Mildred's estimation, the most interesting of the number. He was very tall, and so thin that his clothes hung upon him in baggy folds. His skin was burnt to a dull brown colour, and had a curious dried-up appearance, but his blue eyes shone with a boy-like gleam. Mildred could not make up her mind whether he were old or young, but as he remarked, in the course of conversation, that he had just returned from a fifteen-years sojourn in Ceylon, and that he had left England shortly after his twenty-first birthday, she was able to calculate his age with little difficulty.