ustn't be any fuss, mother."

"Do you mean no one is to come?"

"No one at all, except the tenants and people. Of course they are to
have their fun--I'll see that they have a jolly good time. But I won't
have our own set and the relations."

"Tussie, they've all accepted."

"Send round circulars."

"Tussie, you are putting me in a most painful position."

"Dear mother, I'm very sorry for that. I wish I'd thought like this
sooner. But really the idea is so revolting to me--it's so sickening
to think of all these people coming to pretend to rejoice over a worm
like myself."

"Tussle, you are not a worm."

"And then the expense and waste of entertaining them--the dreariness,
the boredom--oh, I wish I only possessed a tub--one single tub--or had
the pluck to live like Lavengro in a dingle."

"It's quite impossible to stop it now," interrupted Lady Shuttleworth
in the greatest distress; of Lavengro she had never heard.

"Yes you can, mother. Write and put it off."

"Write? What could I write? To-day is Tuesday, and they all arrive on
Friday. What excuse can I make at the last moment? And how can a
birthday be put off? My dearest boy, I simply can't." And Lady
Shuttleworth, the sensible, the cheery, the resourceful, the
perennially brave, wrung her hands and began quite helplessly to cry.

This unusual and pitiful sight at once conquered Tussie. For a moment
he stood aghast; then his arms were round his mother, and he promised
everything she wanted. What he said to her besides and what she sobbed
back to him I shall not tell. They never spoke of it again; but for
years they both looked back to it, that precious moment of clinging
together with bursting hearts, her old cheek against his young one,
her tears on his face, as to one of the most acutely sweet, acutely,
painfully, tender experiences of their joint lives.

It will be conceded that Priscilla had achieved a good deal in the one
week that had passed since she laid aside her high estate and stepped
down among ordinary people for the purpose of being and doing good.
She had brought violent discord into a hitherto peaceful vicarage,
thwarted the hopes of a mother, been the cause of a bitter quarrel
between her and her son, brought out by her mysteriousness a prying
tendency in the son that might have gone on sleeping for ever,
entirely upset the amiable Tussie's life by rending him asunder with a
love as strong as it was necessarily hopeless, made his moth