They eyed each other for a minute. In the end the mother said: “To the girl? No, of course I won't say anything to her—unless it happens again.” It was not even happening when the blind was drawn up, and it never did happen again. But Mrs. Teesdale had given in, for once in her life, and to one of her own children. Moreover, there was an alien in the case, who was also a girl; and this was the beginning between these three. CHAPTER III.—AU REVOIR. It was not a very good beginning, and the first to feel that was John William himself. He felt it at tea. During the meal his mouth never opened, except on business; but his eyes made up for it. He saw everything. He saw that his mother and Missy would never get on; he knew it the moment they kissed. There was no sounding smack that time. The visitor, for her part, seemed anxious to show that even she could be shy if she tried; and as for Mrs. Teesdale and her warm greeting, it was very badly done. The tone was peevish, and her son, for one, could hear between the words. “You're our old friends' child,” he heard her saying in her heart, “but I don't think I shall like you; for you've come without letting me know, you've smoked, and you've set my own son against me—already.” He was half sorry that he had checked, what is as necessary to some as the breath they draw, a little plain speaking at the outset. But sooner or later, about one thing or another, this was bound to come; and come it did. “I can't think, Miriam,” said Mrs. Teesdale, “how you came by that red hair o' yours! Your father's was very near black, and your mother's a light brown wi' a streak o' gold in it; but there wasn't a red hair in either o' their heads that I can remember.” At this speech John William bit off an oath under his beard, while David looked miserably at his wife, and Arabella at their visitor, who first turned as red as her hair, and then burst into a fit of her merriest laughter. “Well, I can't help it, can I?” cried she, with a good-nature that won two hearts, at any rate. “I didn't choose my hair; it grew its own colour—all I've got to do is to keep it on!” “Yes, but it's that red!” exclaimed Mrs. Teesdale stolidly, while John William chuckled and looked less savage. “Ah, you could light your old pipe at it,” said Missy to the farmer, making the chuckler laugh outright. Not so Mr. Teesdale. “My dear,” he said to his wife; “my dear!” “Well, but I could understand it, David, if her parents' hairs had any red in 'em. In the only photograph we have of you, Miriam, which is that group there taken when you were all little, you look to have your mother's fair hair. I can't make it out.” “No?” said Missy, sweetly. “Then you didn't know that red always comes out light in a photograph?” “Oh, I know nothing at all about that,” said Mrs. Teesdale, with the proper disregard for a lost point. “Then have the others all got red hair too?” “N—no, I'm the only one.”