Page:Comin' Thro' the Rye (1898).djvu/168

160 if she had seen it all! That red thing coming through the air; you and I with our mouths open; at least, yours was" She goes off into a fit of laughter, that does not strike me as being particularly seemly. She ceases as suddenly as she began, her fancy changes.

"You can go now," she says. "Will you send my mother up to me?"

Truly, Silvia Fleming has somewhat odd manners. Down in the drawing-room 1 find the sisters looking out of a window at the desolation of the garden, and having delivered my message to Mrs. Fleming, proceed to inform Lady Flytton of the shave we have had, to which she listens with many upliftings of her hands and exclamations.

"And all that little cat's fault," she says. "Whatever will your mother say, when she hears that I took so little care of you? As to that Silvia, it's my belief she is being saved up for something worse!"

" if Paul will come to-night," says Mr. Frere, stirring the fire with a recklessness highly reprehensible in a godly man during these days of greedy coal-merchants and champagne-drinking colliers.

It is rainy October now, and the nights are cold and frosty, and without, mother earth is drawing the flowers, her darlings, down into her brown breast, as Hans Andersen tells us, away from the Frost-King's breath, which strikes chilly against the tender green stalks and late-tarrying fuchsias, myrtles, and magnolias.