"Not I!" reply I, lightly. "I want to hear the end of the anecdote about father's nose! I cannot get over the idea of him in a stiff white petticoat: I thought of it at dinner, whenever I looked at him!" At the mention of father, his face falls a little. "Nancy," he says, abruptly, taking possession of my other hand also, "why did you answer your father so shortly to-day? Why did you look so scared when he tried to joke with you?" "Ah, why?" reply I, laughing awkwardly. "You are not _afraid_ of him, surely?" "Oh, no--not at all!" "Why do you speak in that sneering voice? It is not your own voice; I have known you only twenty-four hours, and yet I can tell that." "I will not answer any more questions," reply I, recovering both hands with a sudden snatch: "and if you ask me any more, I will not take you out walking! there!" So I make off, laughing. CHAPTER V. "A peck of March dust is worth a king's ransom," say I slowly next morning, as I stand by the window, trying to see clearly through the dimmed and tearful pane. "The king would have to do without his ransom to-day." It is raining _mightily_; strong, straight, earnest rain, that harshly lashes the meek earth, that sends angry runlets down the gravel walks, that muddies the gold goblets of the closed crocuses. "And you without your walk!" says Barbara, lifting her face from her stitching. "Poor Miss Nancy!" "There is not enough blue sky to make a cat a pair of breeches!" cries Bobby, despondently, and with his usual vulgarity. Sometimes I am tempted to fear that Bobby is hopelessly ungenteel--ungenteel for life. He has now taken possession of another window, and is consulting the eastern sky. "A ransomless king, and a trouserless cat! That is about the state of the case!" say I, turning away from the window with a grin.