e than ever
taboo. Their request that the story might "go no further" she interpreted
with the elasticity usually accorded to such requests; and proceeded, at
the first opportunity, to retail the whole shocking occurrence to her
pupil as an example of the ingratitude and insubordination of the common
people. For Theresa was nothing if not conservative and aristocratic.
From such august anachronisms as the divine right of kings and the Stuart
succession, down to humble bobbing of curtseys and pulling of forelocks
in to-day's village street, she held a permanent brief for the classes as
against the masses. Unluckily the Miss Minetts' hasty and watery
withdrawal, with upgathered skirts, across the causeway had appealed to
Damaris' sense of comedy rather than of tragedy.--She didn't want to be
unkind, but you shouldn't interfere; and if you insisted on interfering
you must accept whatever followed. The two ladies in question were richly
addicted to interfering she had reason to think.--And then they must have
looked so wonderfully funny scuttling thus!

The picture remained by her as a thing of permanent mirth. So it was
hardly surprising, in face of the dominant direction of her thoughts
to-night, that, when the Miss Minetts' name punctuated Theresa's
discourse recurrent as a cuckoo-cry, remembrance of their merrily
inglorious retirement from the region of Faircloth's Inn should present
itself. Whereupon Damaris' serious mood was lightened as by sudden
sunshine, and she laughed.

Hearing which infectiously gay but quite unexpected sound, Miss Bilson
stopped dead in the middle both of a nectarine and a sentence.

"What is the matter, Damaris?" she exclaimed. "I was explaining our
difficulty in securing sufficient conveyances for some of our party to
and from Marychurch station. I really do not see any cause for amusement
in what I said."

"There wasn't anything amusing, dear Billy, I'm sure there wasn't,"
Damaris returned, the corners of her mouth still quivering and her eyes
very bright. "I beg your pardon. I'm afraid I wasn't quite attending. I
was thinking of something else. You were speaking about the carriage
horses, weren't you? Yes."

But Theresa turned sulky. She had been posing, planing in mid-air around
the fair castles hope and ambition are reported to build there. Her fat
little feet were well off the floor, and that outbreak of laughter let
her down with a bump. She lost her head, lost her temper and her