were much the same still, though the nurses were no more and they had reached the mature ages of twenty-four and twenty, respectively. Where Jack went Paddy went, or very usually followed; and there was scarcely an act of daring even their busy brains could conceive, that they two had not achieved together—much to General Adair’s delight and Mrs Adair’s disquiet, for she felt that if her scapegrace daughter were ever to grow up at all she really ought to begin at once; and yet was quite at a loss by what procedure the change should commence. Boarding school had been tried, but there the girl had drooped and pined to such an extent that when the General went one day to see her, he had been so shocked and upset that he had had her trunk packed at once, and taken her straight back to Ireland without telling her mother anything about it, until they walked into the hall of The Ghan House. “I can’t help it,” was all he had said, in reply to maternal remonstrances. “She wasn’t meant for boarding school life. I expect when the Lord made her, He fashioned her for running wild by the mountains and Loch, and well just have to let her grow up in her own way.” And an hour later he laughed till he nearly made himself ill over the spectacle of a small boat upside down in the bay, with Paddy clinging to it, while a coal barge waited alongside to pick her up and presently landed her close by the General’s landing-stage, a mass of mud and water and coal dust. “Better not let your mother see you,” he managed to gasp. “Faith! I’ve wanted a boy all my life, but there’s no doubt I’ve got the very next best thing.” Then he went off to the Parsonage to tell Miss Jane and Miss Mary O’Hara, while Paddy slipped in the back way and was smuggled up to the bathroom by a faithful old housekeeper who worshipped any flesh and blood related to the General, whom she had known ever since he joined the Dublin Fusiliers, and embarked on the career that made his old regiment as proud and as fond of him, as he, to his last gasp, was of them. But to return to the vexed question of the blouse, the three young people, having settled the difficulty concerning each other’s taste to their satisfaction, though in a somewhat unflattering fashion, Jack and Paddy sat on the table swinging their feet and discussed the delicate question of what would best suit the latter’s complexion. Then suddenly Jack looked up with an innocent expression. “What’s the good of wasting all this time about a body’s complexion when they haven’t got one!” he said. “How dare you! I’ve a beautiful olive tinge!” “Olive!” teasingly; “why you look as if you’d washed your face with my brown boot polish! It must be rather awful to be so ugly that you look much the same in anything,” he finished.