I am even willing to forgive Ned for spending the whole day with you, and only bringing me the wing of a hawk for supper." "That was all my folly, Mr.Lee," said Kate, with swift mendacity; "he was all the time looking after something for you, when I begged him to shoot a bird to get a feather for my hat.

And that wing is SO pretty." "It is a pity that mere beauty is not edible," said Lee, gravely, "and that if the worst comes to the worst here you would probably prefer me to Ned and his moustachios, merely because I've been tied by the leg to this sofa and slowly fattened like a Strasbourg goose." Nevertheless, his badinage failed somehow to amuse Kate, and she presently excused herself to rejoin her sister, who had already slipped from the room.

For the first time during their enforced seclusion a sense of restraint and uneasiness affected Mrs.Hale, her sister, and Falkner at dinner.

The latter addressed himself to Mrs.Scott, almost entirely.

Mrs.Hale was fain to bestow an exceptional and marked tenderness on her little daughter Minnie, who, however, by some occult childish instinct, insisted upon sharing it with Lee--her great friend--to Mrs.Hale's uneasy consciousness.