ing to
her in his high-pitched, gossiping voice his very latest piece of
intelligence.

'I don't believe it,' said Miss Abingdon sharply.

Sometimes these ladies of a sterner period than ourselves say
surprisingly rude things in the most natural and simple way.

'But it's a fact, really!' said Mr. Lawrence, with enjoyment. 'Why,
the first thing the housekeeper said to her was, "So you 're back
again!" No one had seen Toffy for ages. He said he had influenza.'
Mr. Lawrence was going to add some jocular words to the effect that
Toffy was a sly dog, but something in Miss Abingdon's face checked him,
and he murmured only that it was an awful pity.

And then Kitty Sherard came in; she was staying with Miss Abingdon for
a few days to console her for Jane's absence. Miss Abingdon did not
quite approve of her, but, alas for the frailty of humanity, a little
lightness and amusement are sometimes lacking in our otherwise
admirable English homes, and the man or woman who can provide them is
readily forgiven and easily excused. Miss Sherard was amusing; no one
could deny it. She told her _risque_ stories with the innocent look of
a child, while her big eyes were raised almost with an air of
questioning to her bearer's face. Also she was boundlessly
affectionate, although she said such dreadful things, and in fine,
where she was there were young men gathered together.

She came up the drive now. Canon Wrottesley's two elder sons with her
and a sailor friend of theirs, and she was smiling at them all quite
indiscriminately and doing considerable damage to their hearts without
in the least intending it.

Miss Sherard had been shooting duck in the marshes below Bowshott,
where Peter had given her leave to shoot when she liked; and she came
towards the house now, a miniature gun over her shoulder, and clad in a
brown shooting dress, with a knot of her favourite colour under her
chin.

There was a certain jauntiness about Kitty which became her, where in
almost any one else it might have seemed outrageous. Even Miss
Abingdon always remembered that Kitty had lost her mother when she was
four years old, and since then had been the playmate and boon companion
of a man who had been accounted fast even in the go-ahead set in which
he lived, and who had taken his daughter to every race meeting in
England since the time when she could first sit beside him on the front
seat of his coach. He had never allowed her to go to schoo