For three or four years Merrivale had boasted of a weekly paper, and in the column of “Personals” the citizens read one Thursday morning that the Rossiters were coming home on Friday, and that Mrs. and Miss La Rue, the French ladies who were to succeed Mrs. Ferguson in her business, were also expected on that day. Everybody was glad the Rossiters were coming, for Merrivale was always gayer when they were home, as they were hospitable people, and entertained a great deal of company. Usually they brought guests with them, but this time no one was coming, Phil said, except a cousin of his father’s—an old bachelor, who rejoiced in the highsounding name of Lord Seymour Rossiter, though to do him justice, he usually signed himself Major L. S. Rossiter, as he had once been in the army. He was very rich, Phil said, and rather good-looking, and he laughingly bade Queenie be prepared to surrender at once to his charms. But Queenie cared little for Lord Rossiter or any other lord just then. All her thoughts and interests were centered in the one fact that Margery was coming, and she spent the whole of Friday morning at the cottage, seeing that everything was in readiness, and literally filling it with flowers from her garden and greenhouse. “I wish her to have a good first impression,” she said to Phil, who was with her as she inspected the rooms for the last time before going home to the early dinner she had ordered that day, so as to be at the station in time. The train was due at six o’clock, and, a few minutes before the hour, the Rossiter carriage with Phil in it, and the Hetherton carriage with Reinette in it, drew up side by side at the rear of the depot. Reinette was full of excitement and expectation, and made a most lovely picture in her black dress of some soft, gauzy material, with knots of double-faced scarlet and cream ribbons twisted in with the bows and loops of satin—a scarlet tip on her black hat, and a mass of white illusion wound round it, and fastened beneath her chin.