on her aunt's face, while that good lady bustled about the room,
folding the newspaper into an accurate square, and putting it away in a
brass-bound cage; collecting scattered envelopes and putting them in the
waste-paper basket, moving the flower-vases on the chimney-piece, so
that they should stand at mathematically the same distance from the
central clock. At every movement she waited to hear the expected, "Can
I help you, Aunt Sophia?" which right feeling would surely prompt in any
well-principled damsel, and though her reply would of a certainty have
been in the negative, she felt aggrieved that the opportunity was not
vouchsafed.

She was determined not to look in the girl's direction, nor to meet
those watching eyes, but presently, in spite of herself, she felt a
magnetic compulsion to turn her head to answer the bright, expectant
glance.

"Well?" queried Cornelia, smiling.

"Well what, my dear?"

"How are you going to amuse me this forenoon?"

Miss Briskett sat down suddenly in the nearest chair, and suffered a
mental collapse. Positively this view of the situation had never once
dawned upon her unimaginative brain! Mrs Ramsden had dimly wrestled
with the problem, solving it at last with an easy, "She can talk to
Elma!" but the aunt and hostess had been too much occupied with
consideration for her own comfort to think of anyone else. It had
crossed her mind that the girl might tire her, bore her, worry her, or
humiliate her before the neighbours; in an occasional giddy flight of
fancy she had even supposed it possible that Cornelia might amuse her,
and make life more agreeable, but never for the fraction of a second had
she realised that she herself was fated either to bore, or to amuse
Cornelia in return!

The discovery was a shock. Being a just woman, Miss Briskett was forced
to the conclusion that she had been selfish and self-engrossed; but such
self-revelations do not as a rule soften our hearts towards the fellow-
creature who has been the means of our enlightenment. Miss Briskett was
annoyed with herself, but she was much more annoyed with Cornelia, and
considered that she had good reason to be so.

"I have no time to think of frivolities in the morning, my dear. I am
too busy with household duties. I am now going to the kitchen to
interview my cook, then to the store-room to give out what is needed for
the day, and when that is accomplished I shall go to the shops to give
my orders. If