ng herself to toast.

"Shan't I go up to town to-day, take the house if it's the least
possible, and then come down by the afternoon train to-morrow, and start
enjoying myself. I shall be no fun to myself or to others until this
business is off my mind.

"But you won't do anything rash, Margaret?"

"There's nothing rash to do."

"Who ARE the Wilcoxes?" said Tibby, a question that sounds silly, but
was really extremely subtle as his aunt found to her cost when she tried
to answer it. "I don't MANAGE the Wilcoxes; I don't see where they come
IN."

"No more do I," agreed Helen. "It's funny that we just don't lose sight
of them. Out of all our hotel acquaintances, Mr. Wilcox is the only one
who has stuck. It is now over three years, and we have drifted away from
far more interesting people in that time."

"Interesting people don't get one houses."

"Meg, if you start in your honest-English vein, I shall throw the
treacle at you."

"It's a better vein than the cosmopolitan," said Margaret, getting up.
"Now, children, which is it to be? You know the Ducie Street house.
Shall I say yes or shall I say no? Tibby love--which? I'm specially
anxious to pin you both."

"It all depends on what meaning you attach to the word 'possible'"

"It depends on nothing of the sort. Say 'yes.'"

"Say 'no.'"

Then Margaret spoke rather seriously. "I think," she said, "that our
race is degenerating. We cannot settle even this little thing; what will
it be like when we have to settle a big one?"

"It will be as easy as eating," returned Helen.

"I was thinking of father. How could he settle to leave Germany as he
did, when he had fought for it as a young man, and all his feelings
and friends were Prussian? How could he break loose with Patriotism and
begin aiming at something else? It would have killed me. When he was
nearly forty he could change countries and ideals--and we, at our age,
can't change houses. It's humiliating."

"Your father may have been able to change countries," said Mrs. Munt
with asperity, "and that may or may not be a good thing. But he could
change houses no better than you can, in fact, much worse. Never shall I
forget what poor Emily suffered in the move from Manchester."

"I knew it," cried Helen. "I told you so. It is the little things one
bungles at. The big, real ones are nothing when they come."

"Bungle, my dear! You are too little to recollect--in fact, you weren't
there. But the furniture was