He is not so easily read, perhaps, as you in your straightforward nature fancy.' 'If he isn't prejudiced, you are, at any rate,' said Freda.
When they reached the house, Freda went into the drawing-room first, and Miss Hall heard her exclaiming, as she rushed out of it with a card in her hand,-- 'Serena! Nita! only think! Mr Jones, Melbourne, South Australia! Hurrah! I never thought I should be so glad to see a card bearing that name.
Morgan! why didn't you ask the gentleman who called on Miss Hall to come in and wait ?' 'I did not know, ma'am,' said the man who was at the door.

'My master does not always like strangers, and I did not know the gentleman.' Miss Hall had vanished upstairs during this little interlude with Morgan, so Freda did not see the agitation of her manner when she took the card and read the name.

Freda went straight into the library, where she found her father half asleep over a letter.
'Papa! papa! Do you know an old friend of Miss Hall's has called, that she has not seen for twenty years, and Morgan let him go away ?' 'Wasn't she glad, my dear?
It is so exciting to see people whose very faces you have forgotten.' 'Glad, papa?
Of course not.

He must just have come from Australia, where her sister is living, and I daresay has brought letters.

By the way, there was a packet near the card.' 'I don't understand people going so far away from their own country.' 'But, papa, Mr Jones--this gentleman--has gone to sleep at Mr Prothero's, and I daresay they are not prepared for him.' 'Really--well, my dear ?' 'Don't you think you had better write and ask him here to dinner, and I will order a bed to be prepared ?' 'Me! My dear!--a perfect stranger!--a bore! Some one full of tiresome adventures and travellers' stories, and all that sort of thing.' 'He is a clergyman, papa, and a Welshman, I believe.