And so the year wore on, dry, and dreary, and dusty for the two girls, whose only friends were the chosen few whom their brother made known to them--friends who naturally dropped out of their horizon in Captain Vandeleur's absence. "What a miserable summer it has been," said Dopsy, yawning and stretching in her tawdry morning gown--one of last year's high-art tea gowns--and surveying with despondent eye the barren breakfast-table, where two London eggs, and the remains of yesterday's loaf, flanked by a nearly empty marmalade pot, comprised all the temptations of the flesh. "What a wretched summer--hot, and sultry, and thundery, and dusty--the cholera raging in Chelsea, and measles only divided from us by Lambeth Bridge! And we have not been to a single theatre." "Or tasted a single French dinner." "Or been given a single pair of gloves." "Hark!" cried Mopsy, "it's the postman," and she rushed into the passage, too eager to await the maid-of-all-work's slipshod foot. "What's the good of exciting oneself?" murmured Dopsy, with another stretch of long thin arms above a towzled head. "Of course it's only a bill, or a lawyer's letter for pa." Happily it was neither of these unpleasantnesses which the morning messenger had brought, but a large vellum envelope, with the address, Mount Royal, in old English letters above the small neat seal: and the hand which had directed the envelope was Christabel Tregonell's. "At last she has condescended to write to me with her own hand," said Dopsy, to whom, as Miss Vandeleur, the letter was addressed. "But I dare say it's only a humbugging note. I know she didn't really like us: we are not her style." "How should we be?" exclaimed Mopsy, whom the languid influences of a sultry August had made ill-humoured and cynical. "_She_ was not brought up in the gutter." "Mopsy," cried her sister, with a gasp of surprise and delight, "it's an invitation!" "WHAT?" "Listen-- "'DEAR MISS VANDELEUR,-- "'We have just received a telegram from Buenos Ayres. Mr. Tregonell and Captain Vandeleur leave that port for Plymouth this afternoon, and will come straight from Plymouth here. I think you would both wish to meet your brother on his arrival; and I know Mr. Tregonell is likely to want to keep him here for some time. Will you, therefore, come to us early next week, so as to be here to welcome the travellers? "'Very sincerely yours, "'CHRISTABEL TREGONELL.'" "This is too delicious," exclaimed Dopsy. "But however are we to find the money for the journey? And our clothes--what a lot we shall have to do to our clothes. If we only had credit at a good draper's." "Suppose we were to try our landlady's plan, for once in a way," suggested Mopsy, faintly, "and get a few things from that man near Drury Lane who takes weekly instalments."