ere was no ghost," said Mrs. Dashwood, and she laid her paper
down on a side table.

Gwen felt that she had not had a fair chance of a talk. In the absence
of anybody really young it was some comfort to talk to Mrs. Dashwood.
She much preferred Mrs. Dashwood to Lady Dashwood. Lady Dashwood was
sometimes "nasty," since that letter affair. Fortunately she had not
been able to _do_ anything nasty. She had not been able to make the
Warden nasty.

Gwen stood watching May, and then said in a low voice to detain her: "I
wish mother would come!"

"Do you expect her?" asked May, turning round and facing the girl.

"I do and I don't and I do," said Gwen. "That sounds jolly vague, I
know, and please don't even say to Lady Dashwood that I mentioned it.
You won't, will you? It jumped out of my mouth. Things do sometimes."

May smiled a little.

"Mother is so plucky," said Gwen; "I'm sure you'd like her--you really
would, and she would like you. She doesn't by any means like everybody.
She's very particular, but I think she would like you."

May smiled again, and this gave Gwen complete confidence.

"Our relations, you know, have really been a bit stingy," she said. "Too
bad, isn't it, and there's been a bother about my education. Of course,
mother needn't have sent me to school at all, only she's so keen on
doing all she can for me, much more keen than our relations have been.
Why, would you believe it, Uncle Ted, my father's youngest brother, who
is a parson in Essex, has been saving! What I mean is that the Scotts
ain't a bit well off--isn't it hard lines? You see I tell you all this,
I wouldn't to anybody else. Well, Uncle Ted had saved for years for his
only son--for Eton and Oxford: I don't think he'd ever given mother a
penny. Wasn't that rather hard luck on mother?"

May said "Oh!" in a tone that was neutral.

"Well, but I'll explain," said Gwen, eagerly, "and you'll see. When poor
Ted was killed, almost at once in the war, there was all the Oxford
money still there. Mother knew about it, and said it couldn't be less
than five hundred pounds, and might be more. And mother just went to
them and spoke ever so nicely about poor Ted being killed--it was such
horrid luck on Uncle Ted--and then she just asked ever so quietly if she
might borrow some of the Oxford money, as there would be no use for it
now. She didn't even ask them to give it, she only asked to borrow, and
she thought they would like it to be used for the