air; according to her reports. She was not happy there. She hated
muddy walks and ink-stained desks and plain dumpling, and all these
things seemed to be an essential part of life at Miss Blake's.

She left at eighteen, and thereafter she and her mother lived together
in lodgings at various seaside resorts within their means, practising
a strict economy, improving their minds at the free library, doing
their own dressmaking, and keeping body and soul together on potted
meats, cocoa and patent cereals. Mary Agar rebelled sometimes in
secret, regretting the lack of "opportunities," _i.e._, of possible
husbands. She would have been glad to see her daughter settled. The
Agars never used commonsense in affairs of the heart. Her own marriage
had been very foolish from a worldly point of view, and her sister
Alice had run away with her music-master.

"In those days girls had a governess at home and finished with
masters, and young Signor Menotti came twice a week to our house in
Russell Square to teach Alice the guitar and mandoline. We shared
singing and French lessons, but she had him to herself. He was very
good-looking, dark, and rather haggard, and just shabby enough to make
one sorry for him. When Alice said she would marry him mamma was
furious, but she was just of age, and she had a little money of her
own, an annuity as I have, and she went her own way. They were
married at a registry office, I think, and soon afterwards they went
to his home in Italy. Mamma never forgave, but Alice and I used to
write to each other, and her eldest child was called after me. I don't
know how it turned out. She never said she was unhappy, but she died
after eight years, leaving her three little girls to be brought up by
their father's sister."

Olive knew little more than this of her aunt. Further questioning
elicited the fact that Signor Menotti's name was Ernesto.

"The girls are your cousins, Olive dear, and you have no other
relations. I should like to see them."

"So should I."

Olive knew all about the annuity, but she had not realised until her
mother died quite suddenly, of heart failure after influenza, what it
means to have no money at all. She was dazed with grief at first, and
Mrs Simons was as kind as could be expected and did not thrust the
weekly bill upon her on the morning after the funeral, though it was
due on that day. But lodgers are not supposed to give much trouble,
and though death is not quite so heinous