"God made a foolish woman, making me!"
"Have you any idea whom we shall meet?"
It is Barbara who asks this one morning at breakfast. The question refers to a three days' visit that it has become our fate to pay to a house in the neighborhood—a house not eight miles distant from Tempest, and over which we are grumbling in the minute and exhaustive manner which people mostly employ when there is a question of making merry with their friends.
I shake my head.
"I have not an idea, that is to say, except Mrs. Huntley, and she goes without saying!"
"Why?"
"We are known to be such inseparables, that she is always asked to meet us," reply I, with that wintry smile, which is my last accomplishment. "We pursue her round the country, do not we, Roger?"
Barbara opens her great eyes, but, with her usual tact, she says nothing. She sees that she has fallen on stony ground.
"She is the oldest friend that we have in the world!" continue I, laughing pleasantly.