l got to think about."

But granny's anger had been roused. "It may be a dull old place, but it's
home," she said sharply. "You can't understand what that means.
You don't seem to have any particular feeling or you wouldn't be so ready
to leave first one and then the other, without even a heartache. I wonder
sometimes, Mona, if you've got any heart. Perhaps it's best that you
shouldn't have; you're saved a lot of pain." Granny began to whimper a
little, to her son-in-law's great distress. "Anyway, you were ready
enough to run to the 'dull old place' when you were in trouble," she added, reproachfully, and Mona had no answer.

She got up from the table, and, collecting the dishes together, carried
them to the scullery. "Oh, dear!" she sighed, irritably, "I seem to be
always hurting somebody--and somebody's always hurting me. I'd better go
about with my mouth fastened up--even then I s'pose I'd be always doing
something wrong. People are easily offended, it's something dreadful."

She felt very much aggrieved. So much aggrieved that she gave only sullen
words and looks, and never once enquired for Lucy, or sent her a message,
or even hinted at being sorry for what she had done.

"She didn't send any message to me," she muttered to herself, excusingly.
"She never sent her love, or--or anything, so why should I send a message
to her?" She worked herself up into such a fine state of righteous anger
that she almost persuaded herself that her behaviour had been all that it
should be, and that she was the most misunderstood and ill-treated person
in the whole wide world.

In spite, though, of her being so perfect, she felt miserably unhappy,
as she lay awake in the darkness, and thought over the day's happenings.
She saw again her father's look of distress as she snapped at her
grandmother, and answered him so sulkily. She pictured him, too, walking
away down the road towards home, without even a smile from her, and only a
curt, sullen, good-bye! Oh, how she wished now that she had run after him
and kissed him, and begged him to forgive her.

A big sob broke from her as she pictured him tramping those long lonely
miles, his kind face so grave and pained, his heart so full of
disappointment in her.

"Oh how hateful he will think me--and I am, I am, and I can't tell him I
don't really mean to be," and then her tears burst forth, and she cried,
and cried until all the bitterness and selfishness were washed from h