his power; a third won't give up her week-ends; a fourth
won't give up his freedom. Our interest in the thing is all
lackadaisical, a kind of bun-fight of pet notions. There's no real
steam.' And abruptly changing the subject, he talked of pictures to the
pleasant Bigwig in the sleepy afternoon. Of how this man could paint, and
that man couldn't. And in the uncut grass the peacock slowly moved,
displaying his breast of burning blue; and below, the gardeners worked
among the gooseberries.

CHAPTER XXVI

Nedda, borrowing the bicycle of Clara's maid, Sirrett, had been over to
Joyfields, and only learned on her return of her grandmother's arrival.
In her bath before dinner there came to her one of those strategic
thoughts that even such as are no longer quite children will sometimes
conceive. She hurried desperately into her clothes, and, ready full
twenty minutes before the gong was due to sound, made her way to her
grandmother's room. Frances Freeland had just pulled THIS, and, to her
astonishment, THAT had not gone in properly. She was looking at it
somewhat severely, when she heard Nedda's knock. Drawing a screen
temporarily over the imperfection, she said: "Come in!"

The dear child looked charming in her white evening dress with one red
flower in her hair; and while she kissed her, she noted that the neck of
her dress was just a little too open to be quite nice, and at once
thought: 'I've got the very thing for that.'

Going to a drawer that no one could have suspected of being there, she
took from it a little diamond star. Getting delicate but firm hold of
the Mechlin at the top of the frock, she popped it in, so that the neck
was covered at least an inch higher, and said:

"Now, ducky, you're to keep that as a little present. You've no idea how
perfectly it suits you just like this." And having satisfied for the
moment her sense of niceness and that continual itch to part with
everything she had, she surveyed her granddaughter, lighted up by that
red flower, and said:

"How sweet you look!"

Nedda, looking down past cheeks colored by pleasure at the new little
star on a neck rather browned by her day in the sun, murmured:

"Oh, Granny! it's much too lovely! You mustn't give it to me!"

These were moments that Frances Freeland loved best in life; and, with
the untruthfulness in which she only indulged when she gave things away,
or otherwise benefited her neighbors with or without their wil