LITMIR.BIZ

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old Mrs. Brown fed you properly?"

      Pansy was able to reassure her. The "supply" had been quite satisfactory. "Only she said she thought the missus didn't ought to expect no general to do up her boots for her, and mend her stockings," remarked the child. "I told her to give mamma's stockings to me—you know her darning was abominable. Mamma would never have worn them afterwards if she had done them. She grumbles enough as it is at having to wear darned stockings at all. Mrs. Brown is quite a kind old thing. She is staying to-night until eight o'clock to get supper, so that you should not have to set to work the moment you come home."

      "That's a relief," owned Virginia, fetching a deck-chair and seating herself with her arms behind her head. "Where is mamma now?"

      "She's still out, I think. I haven't heard her come in. She went this afternoon to call upon Major and Mrs. Simpson, and to buy some things to trim up a hat."

      "Oh, but she doesn't want another hat——" began Virgie in vexation, and checked herself. "I only trimmed her a new one the day I left home."

      "Well, somebody sent her some money yesterday, I think," replied Pansy. "She went this morning and bought herself a winter coat at Baxter's sale. She said it was an economy."

      "And when the winter comes, she'll say it's out of date," replied Virgie with a little groan. "Oh dear, I do wish she wouldn't do things like that—with poor Tony's suit almost in rags."

      "Well, you know it is no use for me to say anything, don't you, dear?" remarked Pansy, with the quaintest assumption of wisdom.

      She would have been a pretty child but for her look of transparent, egg-shell frailness. Her hair, with bronze lights in it, clustered charmingly about her small face, and her eyes were as lovely as Virginia's own, but with the haggard, hungry expression of a child who has no health.

      She was very small for her age, which was twelve. Her lameness was the result of a bad accident in babyhood. Mr. and Mrs. Mynors spent a winter on the Riviera, leaving their children in charge of a nurse who was not trustworthy. Mrs. Mynors had been warned that the nurse was flighty, but had taken no notice of the caution. She wished to set out on a certain date, and said she had no time to make other arrangements. The woman went out for what is now known as a "joy-ride" with the chauffeur and other chosen companions. She took with her Pansy, who was the baby, and Bernard, the elder boy, who was her favourite, leaving Tony at home in charge of Virginia. The party refreshed itself at many taverns on the way, and it was hardly surprising that the affair ended in a serious accident. Bernard was killed, and the baby's spine was injured.

      The shock of his eldest son's loss was thought to have been the source of Mr. Mynors' own lingering illness. He had forgiven his wife many a flirtation, much consistent neglect of himself. He never forgave her for Bernard's death.

      Nine-year-old Virginia waited, all that terrible day, and part of the night, for the return of the motoring party. Old Brand, the butler, who had been with the Mynors from the time of her father's boyhood, and who had begged his mistress not to leave this nurse in charge of the children, sat hour after hour with Virginia on his lap, until, at ten o'clock, he carried her up to bed, left her in charge of the under-nurse, and himself went out with one or two gardeners to see if he could hear news of the motor-party.

      Virginia, though in bed, could not sleep. She lay listening, listening for a sound in the silent house, until the dawn began to break. Then she heard wheels—wheels and voices on the gravel of the drive; and, slipping from her bed, without arousing the fast-sleeping nursemaid or Tony, she ran downstairs in her white nightie.

      All her life she would remember Brand's face as he strode into the hall and laid down upon a settle the burden that he carried—Bernard, with his head all shrouded in white linen. Then came a doctor, stern and tight-lipped, with the moaning baby in his arms. Virginia could still recall the carbolic smell of the doctor's clothes as he went upstairs, the blueness of the baby's face in its waxen stillness, and the silence punctuated by faint moans.

      The grim realities of life came then to the girl's consciousness for the first time, never to leave her more. For some years—until she went to the school at which she met Miriam Rosenberg—she was grave and silent with a gravity unbefitting her years, her fine health, her promising future. After that she yielded to the spell of youth and friendship and adventure, and the world had seemed ever more alluring, until the final shock of her father's loss.

      This hot afternoon, gazing down upon Pansy's pathetic fragility, she thought what sorrows had been hers in the twenty years of her short life. The future looked sadder than usual, and her customary good cheer was temporarily absent; she felt a curious depression, or sense of coming trouble.

      "You look so grave, Virgie darling!"

      "Pansy, I'm a perfect pig. I believe I am suffering from that horrible feeling we used to call 'after-the-party' feeling."

      "I don't wonder," replied Pansy sagely. "It must be pretty rotten to come back from all that fun and luxury and money to start being maid of all work again. Oh, Virgie, what are we to do?"

      "Do? Why, get on, of course—do our work and enjoy it!" cried Virginia, springing up and going to the window. "Oh, Pansy, the delphiniums! How this hot weather has brought them out! There was not one in bloom when I left."

      "I thought you'd be pleased with that!" cried the child in eager delight. "And look at the roses too, Virgie—the Hiawatha that you thought was dead!"

      "Darling Hiawatha! He came from home," whispered Virginia. She knelt by the window, her elbows on the sill and her curved chin resting on her hands, while her Greuze eyes rested on the row of little garden plots, on the farther row that abutted upon them, and on the backs of the houses beyond those. She was young, it was summer-time, and yet, and yet——

      "Well," said Pansy, "did Gerald send me his love or anything?"

      Virginia started. Gerald at the moment filled her thoughts. She had missed him when he went away—went away without a word! She had not expected to miss him so much. Yet, with the lack of perception of her youth, she failed to connect her present formless dejection with the thought of his departure.

      Pulling herself together with a determined effort, she turned from the window, explained to Pansy the fact that Gerald had been obliged to rush off to Liverpool for his father, and thus had naturally not had time for any special message or present. "But I have got something for you, sweetums," she murmured caressingly. "You wait until the outside porter condescends to deliver my boxes! You only wait!"

      The colour flooded the cripple's transparent skin. "Oh, Virgie, Virgie, what is it? Tell me what it is!"

      "We'll make it a guessing game," replied Virgie. "I will just go and get on some old things, and we will play it properly. Where's Tony, by the way?"

      "Gone with the eleven to play Balchurch. Did you know they have made him twelfth man? He's awfully bucked," said Pansy, with satisfaction. "I don't expect he'll be back yet."

      "Oh! Pansy! but how splendid! He's very young, isn't he?"

      "Two years younger than the youngest man in the eleven," announced Pansy, with satisfaction. "I'm making him a tie in the school colours." She took up her knitting with pride.

      A sound in the hall below struck Virginia's ear. "There's mamma," she said; "I must go and greet her."

      Slipping out of the room, she descended the stairs, and entering the tiny drawing-room on the right of the entrance passage, stood face to face with Mrs. Mynors.

      It was hard to believe that these were mother and daughter; they looked more like sisters. The elder woman, in coquettish slight mourning, had the same face, broad at the brow, tapering at the chin, the same long lovely eyes, deep-lashed, the same poise of the head and wavy golden-brown hair. A close observer alone would mark differences. The elder woman's eyes were blue, like forget-me-nots—the hard blue that looks so soft, that never varies. Her daughter's were less easy to describe. They were changeful as the sea, responsive to varying skies; and just now, in the waning light, they seemed dark grey.

      "Well,

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