at her secretary.

"Miss Bride, let him know my 'excellent reasons,' will you?"

"For a long time," began Constance, in clear, balanced tones, "the
village of Shawe has been anything but prosperous. It was agricultural,
of course, and farming about here isn't what is used to be; there's a
great deal of grass and not much tillage. The folk had to look abroad
for a living; several of the cottages stood empty; the families that
remained were being demoralised by poverty; they wouldn't take the work
that offered in the fields, and preferred to scrape up a living in the
streets of Hollingford, if they didn't try their hand at a little
burglary and so on. Lady Ogram saw what was going on, and thought it
over, and hit upon the idea of the paper-mill. Of course most of the
Shawe cottagers were no good for such employment, but some of the young
people got taken on, and there was work in prospect for children
growing up, and in any case, the character of the village was saved.
Decent families came to the deserted houses, and things in general
looked up."

"Extremely interesting," murmured Mr. Gallantry, as though he heard all
this for the first time, and was deeply impressed by it.

"Very interesting indeed," said Lashmar, with his frankest air. "I hope
I may be allowed to go over the mill; I should like nothing better."

"You shall go over it as often as you like," said Lady Ogram, with a
grin. "But Miss Bride has more to tell you."

Constance looked inquiringly.

"Statistics?" she asked, when Lady Ogram paid no heed to her look.

"Don't be stupid. Tell him what I think about villages altogether."

"Yes, I should very much like to hear that," said Dyce, whose
confidence was gaining ground.

"Lady Ogram doesn't like the draining of the country population into
towns; she thinks it a harmful movement, with bad results on social and
political life, on national life from every point of view This seems to
her to be the great question of the day. How to keep up village
life?--in face of the fact that English agriculture seems to be doomed.
At Shawe, as Lady Ogram thinks, and we all do, a step has been taken in
the right direction. Lots of the young people who are now working here
in wholesome surroundings would by this time have been lost in the
slums of London or Liverpool or Birmingham. Of course, as a mill-owner,
she has made sacrifices; she hasn't gone about the business with only
immediate profit in view; children and