VANITY A BAD GUIDE. 115

“JT would not have them see me dressed so, for the
world. Why, if Ann Noel was to see me with
such shoes on, I don’t think she would speak to
me. At any rate, she would tell all the girls at
school about it, and I should never hear the end
of it.”

Before Clara could reply, they heard a voice
not far from them say, “I know it was not far
from this tree that I set it yesterday, and it caught
two birds.”

Lucy and Clara looked round, and saw a boy
and girl just entering the wood a short distance
below them, having come probably from the rear
of the farm-house while they were looking at its
front. With her mind full of her friends the
Noels, it is not surprising that, in the one rapid
glance she allowed herself, Lucy should have seen,
in the handsomely dressed young master and miss
before her, Tom and Ann Necl. Flight was her
first thought, and away she bounded, neither
waiting for nor listening to Clara, who kept shout-
ing to her, ‘Keep higher up, Lucy! you will get
in the bog.”

The attention of the strangers had been at-