each winter among neighbouring kindred souls.

Cecilia had caught her breath in alarm, but she breathed a sigh of
relief as the stout, over-dressed figure went down the narrow stairs,
with a final injunction to hurry. There was, indeed, no need to give
Cecilia that particular command. She scribbled one word, "Coming," on
Bob's note, thrust it into an envelope and addressed it hastily, and
then tapped on the wall between the servants' room and her own.

Eliza appeared with the swiftness of a Jack-in-the-box, full of
suppressed excitement.

"Lor! I fought she was never goin'," she breathed. "Got it ready, Miss?
The boy'll fink I've gorn an' eloped wiv it." She took the envelope and
pattered swiftly downstairs.

A very few moments saw Cecilia flying in her wake--to Balding's first,
as quickly as tube and motor-bus could combine to take her, since
she dared not breathe freely until Mrs. Rainham's commission had been
settled. Balding's had never seemed so huge and so complicated, and when
she at length made her way to the right department the suave assistant
regretted that the trimming was sold out. It was Cecilia's face of blank
dismay that made him suddenly remember that there was possibly an odd
length somewhere, and a search revealed it, put away in a box of odds
and ends. Cecilia's thanks were so heartfelt that the assistant was
mildly surprised.

"For she don't seem the sort to wear ghastly stuff like that," he
pondered, glancing after the pretty figure in the well-cut coat and
skirt.

Outside the great shop Cecilia glanced up and caught the eye of a
taxi-driver who had just set down a fare.

"I'll be extravagant for once," she thought. She beckoned to the man,
and in a moment was whirring through the streets in the peculiar comfort
a motor gives to anyone in a hurry in London--since it can take
direct routes instead of following the roundabout methods of buses and
underground railways. She leaned back, closing her eyes. If this summons
to Bob indeed meant that their sailing orders had come, she would need
all her wits and her coolness. For the first time she realized what her
stepmother's absence from home might mean--a thousandfold less plotting
and planning, and no risk of a horrible scene at the end. Cecilia
loathed scenes; they had not existed in Aunt Margaret's scheme of
existence. Since Bob's plans had become at all definite, she had looked
forward with dread to a final collision with Mrs. Rainham--it