"Never!" I say, shaking my miserable head; he will never forgive you for getting out of his clutches."
"Alice!" calls mother in the distance, and with a warm hug and kiss she goes away.
"You do look a beauty!" says Jack, meeting me half an hour later. "Have you torn your last remaining frock to ribbons?"
"Preserved gooseberries," I say, determined to put as bold a face upon matters as I can; "they were very sour you know, and they made my stomach ache, and I howled."
Well, I never knew you cry about such a trifle as that before," he says loftily.
I should like to tell him, but I must not. Eight o'clock has struck. The governor and mother, Alice and Milly, set out for the parsonage, an hour ago; scarcely within our memory has he been known to spend an evening out, but to-night he has really gone. It is to be hoped Charles's man and Tabitha will do their spiriting gently, and not be caught. I wonder if Charles Lovelace is wandering about among the flower-beds keeping watch? We have supper, Amberley, Jack, Dolly, Alan, and I. I am just thinking of retiring to my couch, there to indulge in a good comfortable roar, when Dolly appears bearing a small and elaborately folded note, which she hands to me: "I challenge you to a bolstering match.—Jack." Now, if there is one thing on earth I love more than another, it is a hearty, no quarter-giving bolstering match round the house with Jack, and it is a treat I very seldom get, thanks to the governor's barnacle-like habit of sticking at home. To-night is a splendid opportunity, we are never likely to get such another; but with to-morrow's event impending over me, and with my heavy heart holding me down, I doubt if I should be able to give Jack those vigorous whacks to which he is accustomed, so I take a sheet of paper, write on it, "Can't. I'm ill.—Nell," and fold it as elaborately as his. Dolly goes away with it, but quickly returns
