"Good-morning, Mr Sudberry," cries Hector, doffing his bonnet and bowing low to Lucy. "Allow me to introduce my sister, Flora; but," (glancing at the preparations), "I fear that my visit is inopportune." Mr Sudberry rushes forward and shakes Hector and sister heartily by the hand. "My dear sir, my dear madam, inopportune! impossible! I am charmed. We are just going on a picnic, that is all, and you will go with us. Lucy, my dear, allow me to introduce you to Miss Macdonald--" "_Flora_, my good sir; pray do not let us stand upon ceremony," interposes Hector. Lucy bows with a slight air of bashful reserve; Flora advances and boldly offers her hand. The blue eyes and the black meet; the former twinkle, the latter beam, and the knot is tied; they are fast friends for life! "Glorious day," cries Mr Sudberry, rubbing his hands. "Magnificent," assents Hector. "You are fortunate in the weather, for, to say truth, we have little enough of sunshine here. Sometimes it rains for three or four weeks, almost without cessation." "Does it indeed?" Mr Sudberry's visage elongates a little for one moment. Just then George and Fred come out of the White House laden with hampers and fishing-baskets full of provisions. They start, gaze in surprise at the vision, and drop the provisions. "These are my boys, Miss Macdonald--Hector's sister, lads," cries Mr Sudberry. "You'll join us I trust?" (to Hector.) Hector assents "with pleasure." He is a most amiable and accommodating man. Meanwhile George and Fred shake hands with Flora, and express their "delight, their pleasure, etcetera, at this unexpected meeting which, etcetera, etcetera." Their eyes meet, too, as Lucy's and Flora's had met a minute before. Whether the concussion of that meeting is too severe, we cannot say, but the result is, that the three pair of eyes drop to the ground, and their owners blush. George even goes the length of stammering something incoherent about "Highland scenery," when a diversion is created in his favour by Jacky, who comes suddenly round the corner of the house with a North-American-Indian howl, and with the nine dogs tearing after him clamorously. Jacky tumbles over a basket, of course, (a state of disaster is his normal condition), bruises his shins, and yells fearfully, to the dismay of his mother, who runs shrieking to the window in her dressing-gown, meets the gaze of Hector and Flora Macdonald, and retires precipitately in discomfiture. No such sensibility affects the stern bosom of Mrs Brown, who darts out at the front door, catches the unhappy boy by one arm, and drags him into the house by it as if _it_ were a rope, the child a homeward-bound vessel, and _she_ a tug-steamer of nine hundred horse-power. The sounds that proceed from the nursery thereafter are strikingly suggestive: they might be taken for loud clapping of hands, but the shrieks which follow forbid the idea of plaudits.