this final
remark to her.

"I understand perfectly," said Miss Pringle icily, "but it wasn't
Sarah."

"Wasn't it? When one of her old friends dies," he went on to Nora,
"mother always goes to the funeral and says to herself: 'Well, I've seen
_her_ out, anyhow!' Then she comes back and eats muffins for tea. She
always eats muffins after she's been to a funeral."

"The maid said you wanted to see me about something in particular," Nora
gently reminded him.

"That's right, I was forgetting."

He wheeled suddenly once more on Miss Pringle, who had arrived at that
stage in her study of the rug when she was carefully tracing out the
pattern with the point of her umbrella.

"If Sarah wasn't Benjamin's mother, whose mother was she?"

"If you want to know, I recommend you to read your Bible," retorted that
lady with something approaching heat.

Mr. Hornby slapped his knee. "I thought it was a stumper," he remarked
with evident satisfaction.

"The fact is, I'm going to Canada and mother told me you had a brother
or something out there."

"A brother, not a something," said Nora, with a smile.

"And she said, perhaps you wouldn't mind giving me a letter to him."

"I will with pleasure. But I'm afraid he won't be much use to you. He's
a farmer and he lives miles away from anywhere."

"But I'm going in for farming."

"You are? What on earth for?"

"I've jolly well got to do something," said Hornby with momentary gloom,
"and I think farming's about the best thing I can do. One gets a lot of
shooting and riding yon know. And then there are tennis parties and
dances. And you make a pot of money, there's no doubt about that."

"But I thought you were in some motor business in London."

"Well, I was, in a way. But--I thought you'd have heard about it.
Mother's been telling everybody. Governor won't speak to me. Altogether,
things are rotten. I want to get out of this beastly country as quick as
I can."

"Would you like me to give you the letter at once?" said Nora, going
over to an escritoire that stood near the window.

"I wish you would. Fact is," he went on, addressing no one in
particular, as Nora was already deep in her letter and Miss Pringle,
having exhausted the possibilities of the rug, was gazing stonily into
space, "I'm broke. I was all right as long as I stuck to bridge; I used
to make money on that. Over a thousand a year."

"What!"

Horror was stronger than Miss Pringle's resolution to take no fu