"Only an hour."
"Will you come in?"
"I'd rather not," said Louis; "we can't talk if all those people are there. Can't you come for a walk?"
"I'll ask Mrs. Holtby."
The permission was readily given; and Mrs. Holtby, who was sitting up in her room, crept to the window, and peeped through the blind with true feminine curiosity, to see who was the friend from home with whom her much-valued mother's help was so anxious to go out.
"A very particular friend, I should imagine," she said to herself with a smile, as the two disappeared together over the pit mounds.
"Marjorie," said Louis, as she joined him, "of all detestable and hateful places on the face of this earth, I do think Daisy Bank is the worst!"
"Don't be too hard on it, Louis! You should see it at night, when the sky is lit up by the furnace lights. We have constant illuminations here."
"I don't know what Mrs. Douglas will say when I tell her."
"Then you mustn't tell her, Louis. I shall be very angry if you make it out blacker than it is."