"We have it sometimes three times a week," said Susie. "We need not have it at all, you know, but the price of the meat goes to certain very poor widows in the village. I could not manage to give it to them in any other way, and I cannot tell you what sustenance father and I get from our bones and vegetables. You will have the same, and you won't mind, will you, Florence?" Florence was delighted, but rather overdid the occasion in the first instance of the bone dinner, declaring that the meat was almost too tender. But the Colonel gave her a keen glance which was almost stern, and she found herself colouring and was silent. Now the day on which Miss Hudson was to be asked to go and stay with the Arbuthnots was a bone dinner day, and Susie was a little perplexed as to how to manage the matter. She consulted Florence on the subject. Florence was very much excited on her own account, for that was the very day of the week on which Michael Reid had promised to come to receive her answer. Nevertheless, Susie's anxious face drew her at once, and she said, after a pause-- "You could have some little special thing for her alone, couldn't you?" "No; that would never do," said Susie, frowning. "She would not touch it. She would push the bones about in her plate, and make a noise with them, and pretend she was delighted, and the special thing would go out of the room, for not one of us would look at it. What is to be done?" "I tell you what," said Florence, blushing very deeply. "I have got such a lot of money. May not I provide the dinner to-day? You have been, oh, so kind to me, so sweet, so angelic. Do, do, _do_ let me! The darling Colonel won't notice, I know he won't. It will be just our secret. Why may not I have this pleasure?" "There now," said Susie; "why, of course you may. Give me half-a-crown, and I will get something excellent for dinner." So Florence broke into the first of her ten sovereigns, and Susie started off to market, determined to buy beef which should not be rivalled by any other beef that had ever been cooked before in the United Kingdom. When she had gone, Florence went away by herself. She was afraid to go out; she did not care to stay still. She was restless and unhappy. Michael ought to have arrived. He knew quite well where she was, for she had met him once during the week, and had even told him that she was staying with the Arbuthnots. On this occasion the gallant lieutenant had been seen walking down the High Street with two or three young ladies. But he had stopped at sight of Florence looking so radiant, so different from any other girl, in her beautiful sealskin jacket with that becoming sealskin cap. He had looked at her, but had said nothing, cruelly contenting himself with taking off his hat. But his eyes--and Michael had very handsome eyes--seemed to express volumes, and Florence had gone back again to the Arbuthnots' house feeling warm and happy.