“P.S.  Lesson glorious! he is really the greatest man in the world, I don’t care who the next is.  I didn’t thank you for your last letter.  Of course I felt for a minute as if my gas-balloon had bust, when you told me that the lovely Rose was going to marry Dr. Flower; but I guess it is all right.  You see, she must be very sweet and all that; but after all, I never saw her, and you say she has no ear for music, and I am afraid that would have been a pretty bad thing, don’t you think so yourself?  So I guess it is all right, and I am as jolly as a coot.  Awfully jolly about the new neighbours turning out such bricks.  Do any of them play or sing?  Jack.

“P.P.S.  I fought my first duel yesterday, with a chap who slanged the U. S. I got a cut on my left arm, but then, I cut a little slice off his ear, so I was all right.  J.”

“Dear me!” exclaimed Mrs. Grahame; “a duel!  The naughty, naughty boy!  Those student duels are not apt to be serious affairs nowadays, I believe, but still it seems a dreadful thing.  What will the Colonel say when he hears it?”

“He will very likely be pleased as Punch, as Jack says,” rejoined Hildegarde.  “To have his milksop fight a duel would probably seem to him a very encouraging thing.  And of course, mammina, it isn’t like a real, dreadful duel, is it?  I mean, it is more a kind of horrid bear-play?  But oh, to think of our Jack cutting off a piece of a man’s ear!  It almost spoils the beautiful other part of it.  No, nothing can spoil that.  Dear, delightful, stupid, glorious old Jack!  I always knew he had genius.  When shall we see the Colonel?”

“Possibly to-night, at the Merryweathers’,” said her mother.  “These pleasant little tea-parties seem to take in all our little circle.  See! there come the riders back again, Gerald and Phil racing, as usual.  Hear them shout!  Certainly, never a family was better named.”

Hildegarde came up behind her mother, and put her arms lightly round her neck.

“I prefer my pea!” she said.  And the two women laughed and kissed each other and went on with their work.

CHAPTER IX.

Merry weather indoors.

It rained that evening, so the plans for tennis were brought to naught; but the evening was cheerful enough, in spite of the pouring rain outside.  The wide, book-strewn parlour of Pumpkin House was bright with many lamps, and twinkling with laughing faces of boys and girls.  Mr. Merryweather, cheerfully resigned to “company,” possessed his soul and his pipe (being duly assured that Mrs. Grahame liked the smell of tobacco), and the Colonel puffed his cigar beside him.  A little fire crackled on the hearth, “just for society,” Mrs. Merryweather said, and most of the windows were wide open, making the air fresh and sweet with the fragrance of wet vines and flowers.  The two ladies were deep in household matters, each finding it very pleasant to have a companion