ak of such a possibility at all. She realised so fully
that everything was over, that all idea of change in her life was at an
end for ever, that she heard with a little shiver, but with no warm
personal feeling, the end of this discussion. She shrank, indeed, from
the idea of being talked over--but then, she reflected, Minnie would be
sure to do that, Minnie could not be expected to understand. While Mrs.
Warrender began to write her letters Chatty went softly in and out of
the room in her many comings and goings about the flowers. She had them
on a table in the hall, with a great jug of fresh water and a basket to
put all the litter, the clippings of stalks and unnecessary leafage in,
and all her pots and vases ready. She was very tidy in all her ways.
It was not a very important piece of business, and yet all the sweet
orderly spirit of domestic life was in Chatty's movements. There are
many people who would have been far more pleased and touched to see her
at this simple work than had she been reading Greek, notwithstanding
that the Greek, too, is excellent; but it was not Chatty's way.

Mrs. Warrender sat at her writing-table with a little thrill of
excitement and opposition in her. She saw the angry flush on Minnie's
face, and watched without seeming to watch her as she rose suddenly and
left the room, almost throwing down the little spindle-legged table
beside her. Just outside the door Mrs. Warrender heard Chatty's calm
voice say to her sister, "Will you have these for your room, Minnie?"
evidently offering her some of her flowers. (It was a pretty blue and
white china pot, with a sweet smelling nosegay of mignonette and a few
of the late China roses, sweet enough to scent the whole place.) "Oh,
thanks, I don't like flowers in my room, Eustace thinks they are not
healthy," said Minnie, in tones that were still full of displeasure, the
only interruption to the prevailing calm. Mrs. Warrender was not a wise
woman. She was pleased that she and the child who was left to her were
having the better of the little fray. "Eustace thinks"--Minnie might
quote him as much as she pleased, she would never get her mother to
quail before these words. A man may be Honourable and Reverend both,
and yet not be strong enough to tyrannise over his mother-in-law and
lay down the law in her house. This is a condition of affairs quite
different from the fashionable view, and then, Mrs. Warrender was in her
own house, and quite independe