ty so young. Inheritance, of course; and inheritance was more
respectable than acquisition. It did indicate fathers; and in an age
where most people appeared neither to have them nor to want them she
liked this too.

Accordingly it was a pleasant meal, with everybody amiable and
pleased. Briggs thought Mrs. Fisher a dear old lady, and showed he
thought so; and again the magic worked, and she became a dear old lady.
She developed benignity with him, and a kind of benignity which was
almost playful--actually before tea was over including in some
observation she made him the words "My dear boy."

Strange words in Mrs. Fisher's mouth. It is doubtful whether in
her life she had used them before. Rose was astonished. Now nice
people really were. When would she leave off making mistakes about
them? She hadn't suspected this side of Mrs. Fisher, and she began to
wonder whether those other sides of her with which alone she was
acquainted had not perhaps after all been the effect of her own
militant and irritating behaviour. Probably they were. How horrid,
then, she must have been. She felt very penitent when she saw Mrs.
Fisher beneath her eyes blossoming out into real amiability the moment
some one came along who was charming to her, and she could have sunk
into the ground with shame when Mrs. Fisher presently laughed, and she
realized by the shock it gave her that the sound was entirely new. Not
once before had she or any one else there heard Mrs. Fisher laugh.
What an indictment of the lot of them! For they had all laughed, the
others, some more and some less, at one time or another since their
arrival, and only Mrs. Fisher had not. Clearly, since she could enjoy
herself as she was now enjoying herself, she had not enjoyed herself
before. Nobody had cared whether she did or not, except perhaps Lotty.
Yes; Lotty had cared, and had wanted her to be happy; but Lotty seemed
to produce a bad effect on Mrs. Fisher, while as for Rose herself she
had never been with her for five minutes without wanting, really
wanting, to provoke and oppose her.

How very horrid she had been. She had behaved unpardonably. Her
penitence showed itself in a shy and deferential solicitude towards
Mrs. Fisher which made the observant Briggs think her still more
angelic, and wish for a moment that he were an old lady himself in
order to be behaved to by Rose Arbuthnot just like that. There was
evidently no end, he thought, to the thing