‘I didn’t say she was stupid,’ said Mysie, apologetically, ‘only that it must be very stupid not to be able to read till one was seven. Could you?’ ‘Oh, yes. I can’t remember when I couldn’t read. But Maude used to play with a little girl who could read and talk French at five years old, and she died of water upon her brain.’ ‘Dear me! Primrose can read quite well,’ said Mysie, somewhat alarmed; ‘but then,’ she went on in a reassured voice, ‘so could all of us except Jasper and Gillian, and they felt the heat so much at Gibraltar that they were quite stupid while they were there.’ This discussion brought the two girls across the paddock out into a road with a broad, neat footpath, where numerous little children were being exercised with nurses and perambulators. At first it was bordered by fields on either side, but villas soon began to spring up, and presently the girls reached what looked like a long, low ‘cottage residence,’ but was really two, with a verandah along the front, and a garden divided in the middle by a paling covered with canary nasturtium shrubs. The verandah on one side was hung with a rich purple pall of the dark clematis, on the other by a Gloire de Dijon rose. There were bright flower beds, and the dormer windows over the verandah looked like smiling eyes under their deep brows of creeper-trimmed verge-board. What London-bred Dolores saw was a sight that shocked her--a lady standing unbonnetted just beyond the verandah, talking to a girl whose black hat and jacket looked what Mysie called ‘very G.F.S.-y.’ The lady did not turn out to be young or beautiful. She was near middle age, and looked as if she were far too busy to be ever plump; she had a very considerable amount of nose and rather thin, dark hair, done in a fashion which, like that of her navy blue linen dress, looked perfectly antiquated to Dolores. As she saw the two girls at the gate she came down the path eagerly to welcome them. ‘Ah! my dear Mysie! so kind of your dear mother! I thought I should hear from her.’ And as she kissed Mysie, she added, ‘And this is the new cousin. My dear, I am glad to see you here.’ Dolores thought her own dignified manner had kept off a kiss, not knowing that Miss Hacket was far too ladylike to be over-familiar, and that there was no need to put on such a forbidding look. Mysie gave her message and note, but Miss Hacket could not give the verbal answer at once till she had consulted her sister. She was not sure whether Constance had not made an engagement to play lawn-tennis, so they must come in. There sounded ‘coo-roo-oo coo-roo-oo’ in the verandah, and Mysie cried-- ‘Oh, the dear doves!’