Dexie found that the party had not improved Gussie’s temper, for she came home with many complaints as to how she had been neglected.

“I wish you had gone,” she said spitefully to Dexie.  “I was sick and tired of hearing people ask where you were, and why you had not come, and there was not a soul there that I cared to talk to, even Mr. McNeil disappeared, no one knows where.”

Dexie colored slightly as her father regarded her curiously; no further mention was made of the matter at the time.  Mr. Sherwood, however, was not surprised when, a short time after, someone came behind him, and, with arms around his neck, confessed in his ear that “Mr. McNeil had been in to see her, but had come in through the attic, because he was not allowed in by the door, and that they had quarrelled a little, but parted friends,” and ended by asking him “not to tell mamma, for fear Gussie might get hold of it.”

“Poor little girl, she has quite a time of it among them,” her father said as she left him; “yet I think I can safely leave it all with herself.”

CHAPTER XXXIII.

“Only one week more and we must say good-bye to dear old Halifax,” said Dexie one morning, as she hurriedly made her toilet.

“Well, I am glad of it, for it is cold enough here this morning to freeze a bear,” replied Gussie from among the blankets.

“Oh!  Gussie, the ground is covered with snow, and it is still snowing,” said Dexie, joyfully, as she raised the window curtain.  “Oh, I do hope it will last until we can have one more sleigh drive,” and she ran downstairs singing like a lark.

All day the snow kept falling in large heavy flakes, but towards evening the weather turned clear and frosty.  Then the merry jingle of sleigh-bells could be heard on every side, for everyone who could was taking advantage of this, the first sleighing of the season.

Lancy had no trouble in getting Dexie to promise him her company for a sleigh drive, but he was planning for a private little drive in a single sleigh, with only room for two; while Dexie, not quite so sentimentally inclined, was hoping to make it a jolly sleighing party, in which a number should participate.  She had watched Lancy as he drove away to the store in the large open sleigh which was termed “the delivery team,” and a few whispered words to Elsie were hint enough.

A short time before Lancy could be expected home, Dexie and Elsie, well wrapped in furs, were making their way towards Mr. Gurney’s store on Granville Street; but meeting Maud Harrington and Fanny Beverly, they stopped a moment to speak to them.

“Which way are you going, girls?” Dexie asked, her eyes sparkling with mischief.

“We are on our way home, just now,” said Fanny, “but it is a wonder that you girls are not taking advantage of the sleighing, when it will last only a day or two at the most.”