need a plain little schoolgirl to set you off. And I shall not be ’out’ until next winter. I ’m all right, mother dear. Miss Cockburn was always delighted with white linen, and discouraged fussy frocks. I ’m really beautifully ’English,’ and you should be satisfied. Girls are n’t allowed to grow up half so fast over there as here, and I think it is a sensible thing." Mrs. Townsend said no more until, crossing the Hildreth lawn an hour later, she caught sight of Marian Hille. At the first opportunity thereafter, she said in Shirley’s ear, "Miss Cockburn certainly did not advise Marian to cling to the schoolgirl style of dressing. If that is not a French frock she is wearing, my eyes deceive me. She is charming in it, too, and not at all overdressed. That rose-covered hat is exquisite, and quite girlish enough." Shirley smiled, a protesting little smile, but she did not argue the question further. To her mind, "Marie Anne" looked like a Parisian fashion-plate, and her manner was certainly that of a young person of considerable social experience. Shirley did not like it. Her eye went from Miss Marian Hille to Mrs. Murray Townsend, and rejoiced at the contrast. The two were close together, taking their seats for the outdoor _musicale_, which was about to begin. No fault could possibly be found with Jane’s attire, but in it she looked, beside Marian, like a dainty gray pigeon beside a golden pheasant. "I beg your pardon, but may I ask what you are staring at so intently?" said a voice beside her, and Shirley turned to confront the interested gaze of Brant Hille, Marian’s elder brother. "I ’ve been standing beside you here all of three minutes, waiting for you to come back to earth and recognise me. Do you realise we have n’t met since you and Marian came back? And won’t you let me find you a chair over on the edge of the crowd, where we can talk?" This suited Shirley, and she let him establish her in a corner where a clump of shrubbery screened the two from a part of the audience. Until the music began, young Hille plied her with questions about her experiences at Miss Cockburn’s school, evidently enjoying the fact that her point of view seemed decidedly to differ from that of his sister. "I should n’t know you had been at the same place," was his whispered comment, as the first notes of the initial number on the programme smote the summer air and caused a partial hush to fall upon the assemblage. He had been noting, with interest, the change in her. He had known Shirley since their earliest days, but beyond the friendly liking she had always inspired in him, as in everybody, by her girlish good humour and love of sport, he had not thought her especially attractive. Now, however, as Peter Bell had done, he found himself discovering in her qualities distinctly noteworthy.