," Sally murmured.

"Eh? Well, it's a puzzle to me. Look at Nancy. What is it she wants?
She's got forty or fifty years more to live."

"But you don't think like that," breathed Sally. "It's love."

Miss Summers gave a great sigh, and rubbed the tip of her nose with the
back of her forefinger. She was seriously perplexed at the interruption
from one so sagacious.

"_You'll_ think twice before you marry for just love, and nothing else,"
said she.

Sally's little white face was turned away. She was apparently
concentrated upon her work.

"Perhaps I shall," she admitted. "You never know what you'll do till the
time comes."

"You can make up your mind to be careful," said Miss Summers. "It's not
the first man who makes the best husband."

Sally crouched in her place. Her heart was beating so fast that she felt
as though she were suffocating. Miss Summers could not appreciate the
effect of her words, because she had gone back again to the subject of
Nancy and her married shopwalker.

"You ought to have _seen_ that child's work to-day!"

"Perhaps she's going to have a baby?" suggested Sally. It gave Miss
Summers a great shock.

"Oh! D'you think so?" she exclaimed, her eyes wide open with horror.
"Oh, no!"

"You'd have thought they were all going to have 'em, the way the girls
all looked and acted this morning. They were all potty. Silly fools."

Miss Summers gave a sigh of relief, and then she laughed a little.

"We were all rather grumpy this morning," she admitted. "It's the
weather. Always upsets people. Doctor Johnson said it didn't."

"Who's he? Doctors don't know anything at all. Only take advantage of
other people's ignorance. They frighten people, you know, looking wise,
and making you put out your tongue, and all."

"I don't know what we should do without them," sighed Miss Summers. "Of
course, there's always the patent medicines; but I never found anything
that cured my indigestion."

"Only chewing prop'ly," grimly suggested Sally.

Miss Summers abruptly rolled up her work at this unsympathetic remark,
and took off her pinafore. She stood uncertainly by the window.

"I've been keeping you," she said. "But I _am_ worried about that child.
I do hope she hasn't been silly. At her age they've got no sense at all.
They can't see an inch before their nose. You coming now, Sally? All
right, slam the door after you.... Don't stay too late."

Ten minutes afterwards Miss Summers had gone. Sally waited