During the whole of the following week Dare appeared no more at Slumberleigh.

Mrs.Alwynn, whose time was much occupied as a rule in commenting on the smallest doings of her neighbors, and in wondering why they left undone certain actions which she herself would have performed in their place, Mrs.Alwynn would infallibly have remarked upon his absence many times during every hour of the day, had not her attention been distracted for the time being by a one-horse fly which she had seen go up the road on the afternoon of the day of Dare's last visit, the destination of which had filled her soul with anxious conjecture.
She did not ascertain till the following day that it had been ordered for Mrs.Smith, of Greenacre; though, as she told Ruth, she might have known that, as Mr.Smith was going for a holiday with Mrs.Smith, and their pony lame in its feet; that they would have to have a fly, and with that hill up to Greenacre she was surprised one horse was enough.
When the question of the fly had been thus satisfactorily settled, and Mrs.Alwynn had ceased wondering whether the Smiths had gone to Tenby or to Rhyl (she always imagined people went to one or other of these two places), her whole attention reverted to a screen which she was making, the elegance and novelty of which supplied her with a congenial subject of conversation for many days.
"There is something so new in a screen, an entire screen of Christmas cards," Mrs.Alwynn would remark.

"Now, Mrs.Thursby's new screen is all pictures out of the _Graphic_, and those colored Christmas numbers.

She has put all her cards in a book.

There is something rather _passy_ about those albums, I think.