y everyday things--to time. I'd just love to say,
if I were cook, that there shouldn't be any meals to-day, or that they
should be an hour later, or an hour earlier, to suit my fancy."

The Duchessa laughed again.

"My dear Tibby, it's quite obvious that your vocation is not to the
religious life. Fancy you in a convent! I can imagine you suggesting to
the Reverend Mother that a change in the time of saying divine office
would be desirable, or at all events that it should be varied on
alternate days; and I can see you going off for long and rampageous days
in the country, just for a change."

Miss Tibbutt shook her head.

"Oh, no!" she said gravely. "I should hear the big voice there."

"You'd hear it speak through quite a number of human voices, anyhow,"
returned the Duchessa.

There was a silence. She wondered what odd coincidence had led Tibby to
such a subject. If it were not a coincidence, it must be a kind of
thought transference. Almost unconsciously she had been seeing a tall,
thin, brown-faced man marching off in the early morning hours to his work
in a garden. She had seen him busy with hoe and spade, till the bell over
the stables at the Hall announced the dinner hour. She had seen him again
take up his implements at the summons of the same bell, working through
the sunshine or the rain, as the case might be, till its final evening
dismissal. Above all, she had seen him taking his orders from Golding, a
well-meaning man truly, and an exceedingly capable gardener, but--well,
she pictured Antony as she had seen him in evening dress on the _Fort
Salisbury_, as she had seen him throwing coppers to the brown-faced girl
outside the Cathedral at Teneriffe, as she had seen him sitting in the
little courtyard with the orange trees in green tubs, and the idea of his
receiving and taking orders from Golding seemed to her quite
extraordinarily incongruous.

Yet until Miss Tibbutt had introduced the subject, she had been more or
less unaware of these mental pictures.

"Besides," she remarked suddenly, and quite obviously in continuation of
her last remark, "it entirely depends on what you have been brought up
to, I mean, of course as regards the question of being a servant. The
question of a religious is entirely different."

"Oh, entirely," agreed Miss Tibbutt promptly. "You can always get another
place as a servant if you happen to dislike the one you are in."

"Yes," said the Duchessa, slowly and thoughtfull