lish."

"But why, if he was nice?" demanded Trix, exceedingly firmly.

"Oh, but dearest," ejaculated Mrs. Arbuthnot, "it was so unsuitable. He
wasn't even a gentleman farmer. He had been a labourer."

"He might have been a nice labourer," contended Trix.

Mrs. Arbuthnot sighed. "In himself, possibly. But it wouldn't do. The
irritation afterwards. We are told to avoid occasions of sin, and it
would not be avoiding occasions of ill-temper if you married a man like
that. Beer and muddy boots, to say nothing of inferior tobacco. The
glamour passed, though for my part I cannot see how there ever would be
any glamour, probably infatuation, the boots--you know the kind, dearest,
great nails and smelling of leather--the beer and the tobacco would be so
terribly obvious. No, dearest, it doesn't do."

Trix was silent. After all wasn't she again arguing on a point regarding
which she had had no real experience? Pia had tried the experiment, and
declared it didn't work; and that, in the case of a man who _was_ of
gentle birth, though posing as a labourer. In her own mind she felt it
ought to work,--of course under certain circumstances. It was not the
birth, but the mind that mattered. And, if there were the right kind of
mind, there most certainly would not be the boots, the beer, and the
tobacco. Trix was perfectly sure there wouldn't be. But it evidently was
no atom of good trying to explain to other people what she meant, because
they entirely failed to understand, and she was not certain that she
could explain very well to herself even what she did mean.

It was not in the least that she had ever had the smallest desire to run
counter to these conventions in any really important way, but she did
hate hard and fast rules. Why should people lay down laws, as rigid as
the laws of the Medes and Persians on matters that did not involve actual
questions of right and wrong! There were enough of those to observe,
without inventing others which were not in the least necessary.

It was all horribly muddling, and rather depressing, she decided. She
finished her sandwich and glass of sherry, swallowing a little lump in
her throat at the same time. Then she spoke.

"Aunt Lilla," she said impulsively, "I want to go down to Woodleigh."

Mrs. Arbuthnot looked up.

"Woodleigh, dearest. You were there only a little time ago, weren't
you?"

"It was in August," said Trix. "And, anyhow, I want to go again. You
don't mind, do you?"

M