exhibition. "If they are not right this way, they will have to be wrong! I can't waste all my life fussing over a pair of sleeves. What can it matter whether they are put an inch one way or the other? They have just not to settle down and be happy where I put them, for I'm not going to move them any more!" She frowned as she spoke and drew an impatient sigh, which did not altogether refer to the work on hand. There was a weight on her heart which refused to be conjured away even by the presence of Arthur and Eunice, and the interests and occupations which they brought with them. Rob was angry--no, what was even worse, he was not angry, but, with a stupid masculine blindness, had taken for granted that his company was no longer desired. Nearly a fortnight had passed since that miserable afternoon, and not once had he been inside the gates of Yew Hedge. She had met him twice, and each time had come home from the interview feeling more miserable, as Rob elaborately sustained his old friendly manner. To cry, "Hallo, Peggy!" on meeting; to discuss the doings of the neighbourhood in an easy-going fashion, as if no cloud hovered between them, and then to march past the very gates without coming in, refuse invitations on trumpery excuses, and attend a church at the opposite end of the parish--such behaviour as this was worse than inconsistent in Peggy's eyes, it approached perilously near hypocrisy! "I don't care!" she told herself recklessly; but she did care all the same, and her heart gave a throb of relief when on the morning of what had come to be known in the family as "Blouse day," Arthur announced his intention of asking both the Darcy brothers to dinner. "After your hard work you ought to have an audience to admire and applaud," he said, "and I shall tell them we want them particularly. They were asking how your dressmaking was getting on the other day, so I am sure they will be glad to accept. You won't want an answer, I suppose, Mistress Housekeeper? They can return with me or not, as the case may be?" "Certainly! Certainly! It makes no difference," said Peggy loftily; and thus it happened that the girls went upstairs to dress that evening without knowing who would be waiting to receive them when they made their entrance into the drawing-room. The blouses were laid out in the dressing-room which connected the two bedrooms, and to a casual glance there was no doubt which was the more successful. The one could boast no remove from the commonplace, the other was both artistic and uncommon, a garment which might have come direct from the hands of a French _modiste_. Eunice's face fell as she looked, and she breathed a sigh of depression. "Oh, Peggy, how horrid mine looks beside yours! What a mean, skimpy little rag! I am ashamed to appear in it. You will look beautiful, perfectly beautiful! You have done it splendidly." Peggy gave a murmur of polite disclaimer, and pursed in her lips to restrain a smile.