dea," agreed Oliver amiably, "but there's another case
where you'll have to use greater authority than mine. When I stopped
reforming people," he added gaily, "I began with my own family."

"The dear child would come in a minute if I suggested it," said
Virginia, "but she enjoys her life at college so much that I wouldn't
have her give it up for anything in the world. It would make me
miserable to think that any of my children made a sacrifice for me."

"You needn't worry. We've trained them differently," said Oliver, and
though his tone was slightly satirical, the satire was directed at
himself, not at his wife.

"I am sure it is what I should never want," insisted Virginia, almost
passionately, while she rose in response to the announcement of supper,
and met Lucy, in trailing pink chiffon, on the threshold.

"Are you sure your coat is warm enough, dear?" she asked. "Wouldn't you
like to wear my furs? They are heavier than yours."

"Oh, I'd love to, if you wouldn't mind, mother."

Raising herself on tiptoe, Lucy kissed Harry, and then ran to the
mirror, eager to see if the black fur looked well on her.

"They're just lovely on me, mother. I feel gorgeous!" she exclaimed
triumphantly, and indeed her charming girlish face rose like a white
flower out of the rich dark furs.

In Virginia's eyes, as she turned back in the doorway to watch her,
there was a radiant self-forgetfulness which illumined her features. For
a moment she lived so completely in her daughter's youth that her body
seemed to take warmth and colour from the emotion which transfigured
her.

"I am so glad, darling," she said. "It gives me more pleasure to see you
in them than it does to wear them myself." And though she did not know
it, she embodied her gentle philosophy of life in that single sentence.

CHAPTER III

MIDDLE-AGE

Jenny had promised to come home a week before Lucy's wedding, but at the
last moment, while they waited supper for her, a telegram announced with
serious brevity that she was "detained." Twenty-four hours later a
second telegram informed them that she would not arrive until the
evening before the marriage, and at six o'clock on that day, Virginia,
who had been packing Lucy's trunks ever since breakfast, looked out of
the window at the sound of the door-bell, and saw the cab which had
contained her second daughter standing beside the curbstone.

"Mother, have you the change to pay the driver?" asked a vision o