since she had reached an approximately mature age, ever
condescended to play.

And now poor Josephine and her kittens were to be banished to the old
stable, and to-morrow driven back ignominiously to Epsom, all because of
that tiresome, hateful Mrs. Crofton!

There was no one in the kitchen, and it did not look as tidy as it
generally looked; though the luncheon things had been washed up, they had
not been put away.

Mother and son walked on into the scullery to find Betty there, boiling
some water over a spirit lamp. "Betty? How very delightful you look!" her
step-mother exclaimed. "Just like an old picture, child! Wherever did you
get that charming motor-bonnet?"

And then Timmy chipped in: "_I_ thought of it," he said triumphantly; "it
was _my_ idea, Mum, but Godfrey paid for it. He said he hadn't given
Betty a proper present yet, so he _had_ to pay for it, and, and--"

Janet was just a little surprised. She was very old-fashioned in some
ways, and she had brought up her step-daughters to be, as regarded money
matters at any rate, as old-fashioned as herself. It seemed to her very
strange that Betty had allowed Godfrey Radmore to give her such a present
as a hat! Yet another thing puzzled her. She had understood that the
three of them were going off some way into Sussex to look at a house, but
they had evidently been up to London. Motor bonnets don't grow on country
hedges.

"Where's the cat?" she asked, looking round.

"Godfrey has taken her up to the nursery," said Betty, "partly to show
her to Nanna, and partly because we thought it would be better for her to
be quiet up there than down here."

"Oh, Mum--do say that she can stay up there," cried Timmy pleadingly. "I
hate the thought of her being in that dark old stable!"

"Very well; put her in the night nursery."

Even as she spoke, Janet was still gazing at her eldest step-daughter.
Betty certainly looked extraordinarily charming this afternoon. It showed
that the child required more change than she had had for many a long day.
They had got too much, all of them, into thinking of her as a stand-by.
After all she was only eight and twenty! Janet, with a sigh, looked back
to the days when she had been eight and twenty, a very happy, independent
young lady indeed, not long before she had met and married her quiet,
wool-gathering John, so losing her independence for ever.

"I suppose you haven't heard the great news," she exclaimed, forgetting
that Tim