Kitty had never been so happy in all her life. The child honestly
believed hers to be the happiness that comes from congenial work. And
her editor was so clever and so kind! No one ever smoked in the office
now, and there were always roses. And Kitty took them home with her, so
that now there was no need to wonder for whom he had bought them.

Then came the inevitable hour. He met her one day with a clouded face
and a letter in his hand.

"It's all over," he said; "the real original old Aunt Kate is coming
back. She's the dearest old thing, so kind and jolly--but--but--but--
whatever shall we do?"

"I can still write stories, I suppose," said Kitty, but she realised
with a gasp that congenial toil would not be quite, quite the same
without congenial companionship.

"Yes," said he, picking up the bunch of red roses, "but--here are your
flowers--don't you know yet that I can't possibly do without you? In a
few months I'm to have the editorship of a new weekly, a much better
berth than this. If only you would----"

"Write the correspondence?" said Kitty, brightening; "of course I will.
I don't know what I should do without----"

"I wish," he interrupted, "that I could think it was _me_ you couldn't
do without." Her pretty eyes met his over the red roses, and he caught
her hands with the flowers in them. "Is it? Oh, say you can't do without
me either. Say it, say it!"

"I--I--don't want to do without you," said Kitty at last. He was holding
her hands fast, and she was trying, not very earnestly, perhaps, to pull
them away. The pair made a pretty picture.

"Oh, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty!" he said softly, and then the door opened, and
suddenly, without the least warning, a middle-aged lady became a
spectator of the little tableau. The newcomer wore a mantle with beads
on it, a black bonnet wherein nodded a violet flower--and beads and
flower and bonnet were absolutely familiar to each of the astonished
ones now standing consciously with the breadth of the office between
them. For in that middle-aged lady the editor recognised Aunt Kate, the
pleasant, sensible, companionable woman who for years had written those
sympathetic "Answers to Correspondents" in the _Girls' Very Own Friend_.
And at the same moment Kitty recognised, beyond all possibility of
doubt, Aunt Eliza--her own grim, harsh, uncongenial Aunt Eliza.

Kitty cowered--in her frightened soul she cowered. But her little figure
drew itself up, and the point of her