To-day, Barbara, Algy, and I, are all constrained to dine; for have not we a dinner-party, or rather a mild simulation of one ?--a squire or two, a squiress or two, a curate or two--such odd-come-shorts as can be got together in a scattered country neighborhood at briefest notice.

Barbara and I, as it happens, are both late.

It is five minutes past eight, when with the minor details of our toilets a good deal slurred, with a paucity of bracelets and lack of necessary pins, we hurriedly and sneakingly enter the drawing-room, and find all our guests already come together.

Mother gives us an almost imperceptible glance of gentle reproach, but father is so occupied in bantering a strange miss--banter in which the gallant and the fatherly happily join to make that manner which is the envy and admiration of the neighborhood--that he seems unconscious of our entrance.

An intuition, however, tells us that this is not the case, but that he is making a note of it.