Sidenote: Mild Excitement]

It was a peaceful scene; yet it had its mild excitements. The two aunts
began at once to explain.

"We are so glad you are come in," said Aunt Jane.

"Because old Rooker has been," said Aunt Ruth.

"And with such good news! He has heard from his boy----"

"His boy, you know, who ran away," continued Aunt Ruth.

"He is coming home in a month or two, just to see his father, and is
then going back again----"

"Back again to America, you know----"

"Where he is doing well----"

"And he sends his father five pounds----"

"And now the old man says he will not need our half-a-crown a week any
longer----"

"So we can give it to old Mrs. Wimple, his neighbour----"

"A great sufferer, you know, and oh, so patient."

"Really!" said Claudia, a little confused by this antiphonal kind of
narrative.

"Yes," continued Aunt Jane, "and I see a letter has come in for
you--from home, I think. So this has been quite an eventful morning."

Claudia took the letter and went up to her own room, reflecting a little
ungratefully upon the contentment which reigned below.

She opened her letter. It was, she saw, from her mother, written,
apparently, at two or three sittings, for the last sheet contained a
most voluminous postscript. She read the opening page of salutation, and
then laid it down to prepare for luncheon. Musing as she went about her
room, time slipped away, and the gong was rumbling out its call before
she was quite ready to go down.

She hurried away, and the letter was left unfinished. It caught her eye
in the afternoon; but again Claudia was hurried, and resolved that it
could very well wait until she returned at night.

The club was amusing. Mrs. Warwick, its leading spirit, pleasantly
mingled a certain motherly sympathy with an unconventional habit of
manner and speech. There was an address or lecture during the evening by
a middle-aged woman of great fluency, who rather astounded Claudia by
the freest possible assumption, and by the most sweeping criticism of
the established order of things as it affected women. The general
conversation of the members seemed, however, no less frivolous, though
much less restrained, than she had heard in drawing-rooms at home.

She parted from Sarah Griffin at the door of the club, and drove to St.
John's Wood in a hansom. The repose of the house had not been stirred in
her absence. Aunt Jane, Aunt Ruth, Molossus, and Scipio, all were in
their