Page:The Fate of Fenella (1892).djvu/21

 coach-fellow swings himself into the seat beside her.

She is so slight, so small, that after all there is ample room and to spare, especially as he answers to the graceful description of him furnished by the driver.

"Do you call this a new drive?" she says to George, as they rattle past the lovely Bogs Valley Gardens, and up the steep ascent to the Spa. "Why—"

"Fenella!" breathlessly exclaimed a voice beside her.

"Frank."

Two aghast, petrified young faces looked into each other; then the girl, recovering herself first, said:

"Pray, how do you come here?"

"And what brings you?" he retorted.

"Gout. What are you laughing at?" she said airily; "haven't I got ancestors? Didn't they drink October ale by the hogshead, and old port by the gallon? And I've got to pay the piper, for I never heard of the liquor hurting them. But talking of ancestors, I've got such a lovely story to tell you. There is a frightfully fat, vulgar woman at our hotel, and you know there are only two things in this sinful world that give me real fits—humbug and vulgarity. Well, this woman never for one single meal lets anybody forget her progenitors, and bawls out at the top of her dreadful