s boyhood, was now supposed to be
Ishmael's business room, and as such inviolate.

"Nicky! Nicky!" cried Lissa. "How late you are! And you know you
promised for twelve o'clock, and we've been waiting for ages and ages!"

"Promised what?" asked Nicky.

"Oh, Nicky ...!" on a wail of disgust; "you don't mean to say you've
forgotten! Why, only yesterday you promised that to-day if it was fine
you'd take us out in your tandem. You know you did!"

"Oh, Lord! Well, I can't, anyway. I've got an engagement."

"Nicky!" Ruth joined in the wail, but it was Lissa who passed rapidly to
passion, her face crimson and her eyes full of tears of rage.

"Then you're a pig, that's what you are--a perfect pig, and I hate you!
You never do what you say you will now, and I think it's very caddish of
you. It's all that beastly Oxford; you've never been the same since you
went there. Mother says so too. She says it's made you a conceited young
puppy; I heard her!"

"Lissa!" Ishmael's voice was very angry. "Never repeat what anyone has
said about anyone else--never, never. Do you hear me?"

"I don't care, she did say it, so there!"

Nicky was crimson. He went to the door. "Then it's easy to see where
you get your good manners from!" he retorted, and was gone before
Ishmael could say anything to him. Lissa was still trembling with rage,
and Ruth, who was rather a cry-baby, lifted up her voice and wept,
partly because of the disappointment and partly because she could not
bear people not to be what she called "all comfy together."

Georgie Ruan heard the noise and came in briskly. Ishmael made her a
despairing gesture to remove the two children.

Georgie stood taking in the scene. She had altered in fourteen years
more than either Ishmael, who was seldom away from her, or than she
herself, had realised; for she had never been a beauty anxiously to
watch the glass, and motherhood had absorbed her to the overshadowing of
self. She had coarsened more than actually changed--her sturdy little
figure had lost its litheness in solidity, her round face had thickened
and the skin roughened. Her movements were as vigorous and her mouth as
wonderful, though it was more lost in her face, but her small blue eyes
were still bright. She still managed to keep her air of a great baby,
and it went rather sweetly with her obvious matronliness. She swept like
a whirlwind on the two little girls, scolding and coaxing in a breath.
Lissa at once started to po