"I like modern comfort," she said. "I love everything beautiful and solid and good. I admire this house, and I admire Moresby. It is picturesque. But I wouldn't care to live here." "No? Why?" he asked. "I don't enjoy vegetating. I should turn into a cabbage if I had to remain here. It's the same with Peggy. We are all alike that way; we must have change." "Ah!" he said. "That is a sign of the times, too." For some reason or other he seemed ill-pleased with her last remark, though he could not have explained why a desire for change in a young lady whom he met for the first time should disturb him. Perhaps it was less the expression of Sophy's own inclination than that reference to a similar taste on her sister's part which vexed him; or it may have been that he resented the general tone of her remarks about the desirability of Moresby as a permanent dwelling-place. He had lived most of his life in Moresby, and he felt no nearer in kin to the vegetable world now than in the days of his more fervid youth. "It is natural that the present generation should be representative of the times," observed Sophy cheerfully. "I wouldn't wish to be an anachronism." She laughed gaily at the perplexed gravity of his face. Her sister's opinion, expressed earlier in the evening, to the effect that John would not like her because of the sharpness of her tongue, occurred to her as surprisingly astute. John certainly did not like her. Possibly he cherished antipathy towards most things which he failed to understand. Mr Musgrave had never met such an astounding young woman before. By comparison, Peggy Annersley appeared a very simple and gracious contrast. He was getting perilously near to thinking of Peggy as womanly; and yet when he first met Peggy that flattering adjective was the last he would have applied as fittingly describing her. He had almost forgotten the abominable overalls. He certainly was not thinking of them when presently Peggy flitted up to them, a distractingly pleasing sight in blue, with blush roses at her breast. The roses had been made in Paris, but Mr Musgrave did not detect their artificiality. Peggy dexterously exchanged her own partner for her sister's escort, and sat down beside Mr Musgrave on the big oak seat. "I'm tired," she said, and played absently with her fan, making the remark as though she considered some explanation of this rescue of her bored young sister necessary. Sophy's idea of enjoyment was not, she knew, consistent with sitting out when she might be dancing; and the band, hired for the occasion from Rushleigh, was playing a two-step. She did not look tired when she made this admission. But Mr Musgrave was not observant, and he considered it becoming in a woman to confess to fatigue. Also the substitution of companions was entirely agreeable to him. Peggy was undeniably the more charming of the two sisters. "Don't you dance?" she asked presently.