orted couple, these new-made friends.

But when all the recollections had been talked over and wept over,
when Mrs. Prettyman had told Robinette, with the extraordinary detail
that old people can put into their memories of long ago, all that she
remembered of Cynthia de Tracy's childhood, then Robinette began to
question the old woman about her own life. Was she comfortable? Was
she tolerably well off? Or had she difficulty in making ends meet?

To these questions Mrs. Prettyman made valiant answers: she had a fine
spirit, and no wish to let a stranger see the skeleton in the
cupboard. But Robinette's quick instinct pierced through the veil of
well-meant bravery and touched the truth.

"Nurse dear," she said, "you say you're comfortable, and well off, but
you won't mind my telling you that I just don't quite believe you."

"Oh, my dear heart, what's that you be sayin'? callin' of me a liar?"
chuckled the old woman fondly.

Robinette rose from her seat on the bench and stood back to
scrutinize the cottage. It was exquisitely picturesque, but this
very picturesqueness constituted its danger; for the place was a
perfect death trap. The crumbling cob-walls that had taken on those
wonderful patches of green colour, soaked in the damp like a sponge:
the irregularity of the thatched roof that looked so well, admitted
trickles of rain on wet nights; and the uneven mud floor of the
kitchen revealed the fact that the cottage had been built without any
proper foundation. The door did not fit, and in cold weather a
knife-like draught must run in under it. All this Robinette's
quick, practical glance took in; she gave a little nod or two,
murmuring to herself, "A new thatch roof, a new door, a new cement
floor." Then she came and sat down again.

"Tell me now, how much do you have to live on every week, Nurse?" she
asked.

"Oh, Miss Robinette--ma'am, I should say--'t is wonderful how I gets
on; and then there's the plum tree--just see the flourish on it,
Missie dear! 'T will have a crop o' plums come autumn will about drag
down the boughs! I don't know how 't would be with me without I had
the plum tree."

"Do you really make something by it?" Robinette asked.

The old woman chuckled again. "To be sure I makes; makes jam every
autumn; a sight o' jam. Come inside again, me dear, an' see me jam
cupboard and you'll know."

She hobbled into the kitchen, and opened the door of a wall press in
the corner. There, row above row