He came into the drawing-room. He always seemed to me as if he did not quite know whether he liked or disliked Mr. Carmel. Whenever I saw them together, he appeared to me, like Mrs. Malaprop, to begin with a little aversion, and gradually to become more and more genial. He greeted Mr. Carmel a little coldly, and brightened as he looked on me; he was evidently pleased with me, and talked me over with myself very good-humouredly. I took care to show him my flowers. He could not help admiring them. "These are the best flowers I have seen anywhere. How did you contrive to get them? Really, Mr. Carmel, you are a great deal too kind. I hope Ethel thanked you. Ethel, you ought really to tell Mr. Carmel how very much obliged you are." "Oh! she has thanked me a great deal too much; she has made me quite ashamed," said he. And so we talked on, waiting for mamma, and I remember papa said he wondered how Mr. Carmel, who had lived in London and at Oxford, and at other places, where in one kind of life or another one really does live, contrived to exist month after month at Malory, and he drew an amusing and cruel picture of its barbarism and the nakedness of the town of Cardyllion. Mr. Carmel took up the cudgels for both, and I threw in a word wherever I had one to say. I remember this laughing debate, because it led to this little bit of dialogue. "I fortunately never bought many things there--two brushes, I remember; all their hairs fell out, and they were bald before the combs they sent for to London arrived. If I had been dependent on the town of Cardyllion, I should have been reduced to a state of utter simplicity." "Oh, but I assure you, papa, they have a great many very nice things at Jones's shop in Castle Street," I remonstrated. "Certainly not for one's dressing room. There are tubs at the regattas, and sponges at their dinners, I daresay," papa began, in a punning vein. "But you'll admit that London supplies no such cosmetics as Malory," said Mr. Carmel, with a kind glance at me. "Well, you have me there, I admit," laughed papa, looking very pleasantly at me, who, no doubt, was at that moment the centre of many wild hopes of his. Mamma came down now; there was no time to lose. My heart bounded, half with fear. Mr. Carmel came downstairs with us, and saw us into the carriage. He stood at the door-steps smiling, his short cloak wrapped about him, his hat in his hand. Now the horses made their clattering scramble forward; the carriage was in motion. Mr. Carmel's figure, in the attitude of his last look, receded; he was gone; it was like a farewell to Malory, and we were rolling on swiftly towards the ball-room, and a new life for me.