'Are you aware it is the first of October, Miss Hazel?'
'Time for chestnuts, isn't it?' said the girl. 'I had forgotten all bout them.'
'There are other nuts to crack besides chestnuts. The owner of the house you had last winter has written to ask if you want it again this year.'
'Talk of the restlessness of women!' said Hazel. 'Here are we but just settled in the country, and Mr. Falkirk already proposing to return to town.'
'I don't know what you are,' said Mr. Falkirk, 'but I am not settled. Of course, coming home at the end of the season, I have no cook; and Gotham informs me that the kitchen chimney smokes. I should think it did, to judge by the condition of my beefsteaks.'
'I am very sorry, sir! Suppose you condescend to my beefsteaks until the cook and the smoke change places? The blue room is in perfect orderand would suit your state of mind,' said Miss Wych, eyeing Mr. Falkirk with an air of deep gravity. 'Then there is always Europe'
'Is that the next thing!' exclaimed Mr. Falkirk, with a positively alarmed air. 'I have been expecting it.'
'I wanted to go last year, you know, sir,and (if nobody said anything against it) I think I should write at once and secure my passage.'
'To what quarter of the world, miss Hazel?'
'We might go round, sir; and stop where things promised fairest.'