s our age he only had
sixpence?"

"I don't believe it for a moment," said Nancy.

"It doesn't matter. He had to say it. I was going to lead up much more
slowly. How often has starling told you that if a thing's worth doing at
all it's worth doing well?"

Here Miss Bird herself appeared at the door and said it was just as she
had expected, and had they heard her tell them to do a thing or had they
not, because if they had and had then gone and done something else she
should go straight to Mrs. Clinton, for she was tired of having her
words set at nought, and it was time to take serious measures, although
nobody would be more sorry to have to do so than herself, Joan and Nancy
being perfectly capable of behaving themselves as they should if they
would only set their minds to it and do exactly as she told them.

Cicely heard the latter part of the address fading away down the
corridor, shut the door with a smile and began to take off her hat with
a sigh. The chief ordeal was over, but there was a good deal to go
through still before she could live in this room again as she had lived
in it before. If, indeed, she ever could. She looked round her, and its
familiarity touched her strangely. It spoke not of the years she had
occupied it, the five years since she had left the nursery wing, but of
the one night when she had prepared to leave it for ever. It would be
part of her ordeal to have that painful and confusing memory brought
before her whenever she entered it. She hated now to think of that night
and of the day and night that had followed it. She flushed hotly as she
turned again to her glass, and called herself a fool. Then she
resolutely turned pictures to the wall of her mind and made herself
think of something else, casting her thoughts loose to hit upon any
subject they pleased. They struck against her aunts at the dower-house,
and she grappled the idea and made up her mind to go and see them after
tea, and get that over.

She found them in their morning-room, engaged as before, except that
their tea-table had been cleared away. "Well, dear Aunt Ellen and Aunt
Laura, I have come back," she said, kissing them in turn. "Muriel's
house _is_ so pretty. You would love to see it."

But Aunt Ellen was not to be put off in this way. The Squire had come
down to them on the afternoon of the day after Cicely had disappeared,
and had gained more solid satisfaction from the attitude taken up by
Aunt Ellen and Aunt Laura