"Now, shall I sing you another song?"
"Oh yes, please!" rose from a dozen little mouths.
"You must not be troublesome to his lordship," says Grace.
"Oh no, I like it. I'll sing them one more song, and then—I want to speak to you, Miss Harvey."
Grace curtsied, blushed, and shook all over. What could Lord Scoutbush want to say to her?
That indeed was not very easy to discover at first; for Scoutbush felt so strongly the oddity of taking a pretty young woman into his counsel on a question of sanitary reform, that he felt mightily inclined to laugh, and began beating about the bush, in a sufficiently confused fashion.
"Well, Miss Harvey, I am exceedingly pleased with—with what I have seen of the school—that is, what my sister tells, and the clergyman—"
"The clergyman?" thought Grace, surprised, as she well might be, at what was entirely an impromptu invention of his lordship's.
"And—and—there is ten pounds toward the school, and—and, I will give an annual subscription the same amount."
"Mr. Headley receives the subscriptions, my lord," said Grace, drawing back from the proffered note.