CHISWICK GARDENS The following Thursday was as fine as a Chiswick flower-show-day ought to be, and so very seldom is.

The party who had agreed to congregate there--the party, that is, whom we are to meet--was very select.

Linda and Katie had come up to spend a few days with their sister.

Mrs.Val, Clementina, Gertrude, and Linda were to go in a carriage, for which Alaric was destined to pay, and which Mrs.Val had hired, having selected it regardless of expense, as one which, by its decent exterior and polished outward graces, conferred on its temporary occupiers an agreeable appearance of proprietorship.

The two Miss Neverbends, sisters of Fidus, were also to be with them, and they with Katie followed humbly, as became their station, in a cab, which was not only hired, but which very vulgarly told the fact to all the world.
Slight as had been the intimacy between Fidus Neverbend and Alaric at Tavistock, nevertheless a sort of friendship had since grown up between them.