stable, and we hope to get started next week.
There is money enough to pay wages for three months."

In spite of her fatigue, her eye was bright and restless. The energy of
thought and action from which she had just emerged still breathed from
every limb and feature.

"Where have you got the money?"

"Mr. Raeburn has managed it," said Marcella, briefly.

Mrs. Boyce gave a slight shrug of the shoulders.

"And afterwards--what is to become of your product?"

"There is a London shop Lady Winterbourne knows will take what we make
if it turns out well. Of course, we don't expect to pay our way."

Marcella gave her explanations with a certain stiffness of self-defence.
She and Lady Winterbourne had evolved a scheme for reviving and
improving the local industry of straw-plaiting, which after years of
decay seemed now on the brink of final disappearance. The village women
who could at present earn a few pence a week by the coarser kinds of
work were to be instructed, not only in the finer and better paid sorts,
but also in the making up of the plait when done, and the "blocking" of
hats and bonnets--processes hitherto carried on exclusively at one or
two large local centres.

"You don't expect to pay your way?" repeated Mrs. Boyce. "What, never?"

"Well, we shall give twelve to fourteen shillings a week wages. We shall
find the materials, and the room--and prices are very low, the whole
trade depressed."

Mrs. Boyce laughed.

"I see. How many workers do you expect to get together?"

"Oh! eventually, about two hundred in the three villages. It will
regenerate the whole life!" said Marcella, a sudden ray from the inner
warmth escaping her, against her will.

Mrs. Boyce smiled again, and turned her work so as to see it better.

"Does Aldous understand what you are letting him in for?"

Marcella flushed.

"Perfectly. It is 'ransom'--that's all."

"And he is ready to take your view of it?"

"Oh, he thinks us economically unsound, of course," said Marcella,
impatiently. "So we are. All care for the human being under the present
state of things is economically unsound. But he likes it no more than I
do."

"Well, lucky for you he has a long purse," said Mrs. Boyce, lightly.
"But I gather, Marcella, you don't insist upon his spending it _all_ on
straw-plaiting. He told me yesterday he had taken the Hertford Street
house."

"We shall live quite simply," said Marcella, quickly.

"What, no carriage?"

Marcella