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It was one of Lady Graham’s many charming ways that as well as being gentle and lovely and extremely capable she had never been known to forget a promise, even if she could not fulfil it at once. Time passed and just as Mrs. Marling was beginning to wish (though not really) that Lucy could be married out of hand and all this fuss over, Agnes rang up to say that young Lady Norton was taking over the Hospital Libraries and Isabel Dale was leaving her job by friendly and mutual agreement. Eleanor Grantly, she said, who was not being married till after Christmas (or to put it more truthfully till after Michaelmas Law Sitting ended and Colin Keith was free), was going to stay on and get the new secretary into the ways of the office.

“So if you would like to see Isabel, will you ring her up?” said Agnes. “I would love to ask you both to tea at Holdings, but Robert thinks the Women’s County Club would be better. Besides it gets dark so early now, and we shall be back in ordinary time soon, which is so sad.”

Mrs. Marling agreed.

“Darling mamma never liked summer time,” said Agnes, evoking by her sweet melancholy voice a vision of Lady Emily fading in the glare of late summer afternoons, “but as she did not particularly notice which kind of time it was unless we told her, it was really all quite nice,” upon which remark her ladyship went away leaving her cousin Amabel to reflect that David Leslie was not far wrong when he spoke of his sister Agnes as a divine idiot.

With great courage Mrs. Marling mentioned Agnes’s plan to Lucy, who, much mellowed by love and a long hard day with Mr. Spadger about the new cowsheds, kissed her mother in a manly way and said a very good idea to have someone nice to help with letters and presents and things, all of which she appeared to look upon as natural phenomena in no way connected with herself, and Isabel Dale’s uncle Christopher Dale over at Allington had grown that new Canadian wheat better than anyone in the county, emboldened by which remark her mother did not ring up, for it was to her slightly undignified to begin an acquaintance by telephone, but wrote to Miss Dale. Within two days she had an answer from Miss Dale and went into Barchester to meet her at the Women’s County Club. As she entered the dark strangers’ room a figure rose and came towards her.

“Mrs. Marling?” said a pleasant voice, “I am Isabel Dale. It was very kind of you to ask me to lunch.”

Mrs. Marling made a suitable reply and took her guest up to the dining-room, where she had reserved a table for two. Here, when the not very interesting meal had been ordered, she was able to see Miss Dale more clearly. She was a not quite young woman, probably about Lucy’s age, she thought, which was nearer thirty than twenty, tall, good-looking, fair and blue-eyed, with the oval face that is today very rare. Her clothes Mrs. Marling appraised in her brief glance as very good and very suitable and she was pleased to observe that though her lips were slightly reddened, her nails were not.

“I suppose,” said Mrs. Marling, “that Lady Graham told you more or less what I wanted, though it is difficult to say exactly what I do want.”

“I think I understand,” said Miss Dale. “A kind of extra daughter who isn’t a daughter, plus a secretary who isn’t a secretary. If you were different I would say someone you can be just as nice or as rude to as you would be to your own family, only I’m perfectly sure none of you are ever rude. I can do shorthand and typing and housekeeping and gardening and hens, but I don’t know cows or pigs. I was with the Red Cross through the war and then lately at the Hospital Library in Barchester, living at home, and I have a general feeling that if I live with my mother much longer we might annoy each other. Nothing against her, nor against me, but it doesn’t work and she has two old servants and a lot of friends at Allington. I shall have some money when she dies, I believe, but I like to earn as well, as you can’t trust Them for a moment when it’s a question of investments. I am never ill and I have quite a good temper, except when mother says how sad it is that girls don’t want to stay at home now, or that girls don’t seem to marry now. I think that’s all.”

Mrs. Marling had been thinking hard while Miss Dale was speaking, and if anyone says you can’t listen and think simultaneously they are wrong: and a good many people can not only listen and think but talk as well. And how one’s mind does it we cannot say, for the human mind is a queer place and much of it unexplored and likely to remain so. She had liked her guest’s voice and much approved her allusion to Them.

“Thank you, Miss Dale,” she said. “It all sounds quite reasonable. As Lady Graham will have told you, my elder children are married. My younger son, Oliver, lives in London and usually comes down for week-ends and holidays, and my younger daughter, Lucy, who is a farmer, is engaged to Mr. Adams, our M.P. I have a good deal of county work and so has my husband. I must tell you at once that he is always rather deaf and becomes stone deaf if he doesn’t like people. Do you feel that you could fit happily into our busy life, beginning by getting Lucy’s wedding presents into some sort of order?”

“I think I could,” said Miss Dale. “If you would like to try me I suggest a month on trial on both sides so that I could see about the presents and get the hang of things and you could see if I give satisfaction. I am twenty-nine, though I don’t look it because I’m fair, and am not engaged or likely to be so. He was killed in Italy. Lady Pomfret will give me a character and I can shout at deaf people quite quietly. John’s father was rather deaf and I used to talk a lot with him. He died of a broken heart I think in the end. I didn’t, so here I am.”

Mrs. Marling had a curious feeling that Miss Dale was interviewing her rather than being interviewed, but her whole impression of her was favourable and it was arranged that Miss Dale should come to Marling Hall on the following Saturday and start work on the Monday.

Accordingly late on Saturday afternoon Miss Dale arrived at Melicent Halt, the little station that served Marling. While she was getting her suitcases down from the rack a porter came up.

“Are you Miss Dale, miss?” he said, taking her luggage firmly under his protection. “Miss Lucy’s outside in the van. She said to bring you out, miss, because she’s got a pig inside.”

Miss Dale, a countrywoman born and bred, liked this beginning to her adventure and followed the porter to the gate. In the little station yard was a Ford van from which came gruntings and squealings and by it stood a handsome weather-beaten young woman of about her own age.

“Hullo, are you Miss Dale?” said the young woman. “I’m Lucy Marling. I say, I hope you don’t mind pigs. I had to bring this one over from Barchester. He’s spending the night here and tomorrow I’m taking him over to Adamsfield. Stick the suitcases under the seat, Bill. Come on.”

Thus summoned, Miss Dale got into the van beside Lucy and they drove through the pretty village of Marling Melicent and up the drive to Marling Hall. The journey did not take more than ten minutes but during that time the two young women were able to take stock of each other and found it satisfactory. Lucy stopped at the back door, for the front door had hardly ever been used since 1939 except for Red Cross parties, took a suitcase in each hand, and saying: “Come on,” led Miss Dale up what were obviously back stairs, though very nice ones, to the second floor.

“Here’s your room,” said Lucy, hitting a door open with her knee and banging the suitcases onto the floor. “The bathroom’s through that door and I’m on the other side of it. Mother and father sleep on the first floor but they aren’t below us so it doesn’t matter if you make a bit of noise. I put a writing-table for you and there are plenty of cupboards and things and I know the bed’s all right because I sleep in it sometimes if I want to get up very early so that mother and father won’t hear the alarm clock. If you’d like to unpack I’ll go and see about the pig and come back to you.”

Hardly waiting for an answer she went loudly downstairs.

Miss Dale left to herself began to unpack, putting her clothes neatly and methodically into drawers and cupboards. She liked her room, which faced west and was drenched in warm sunlight. The old-fashioned wallpaper of large pink roses and trailing leaves was faded where the sun had lain on it, the good walnut furniture bore signs of family use. The carpet had once, she thought, been an Aubusson, but was now little more than a pinkish string floor-cover though very clean. Some engravings of family portraits hung on the walls and there was a bookcase containing a number of Miss Charlotte Yonge’s novels, a Bible, two volumes of Good Words for the Young, a very old edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and a medley of Victorian yellowbacks which Miss Dale looked forward to exploring. An embroidered bell-pull hung by the fireplace and on the marble mantelpiece were two money boxes, one of Anne Hathaway’s cottage and one of Burns’s cottage, two china statuettes of very curly white French poodles, and a dirty penwiper.

When Miss Dale had put her things away and stacked her suitcases on a high shelf in the cupboard, she stood up, stretched herself, went to the window, and looked out over the garden to the farmlands and the meadows, where the winding course of the river was marked by alders and rushes, to the distant downs.

“It’s a good view, isn’t it?” said Lucy coming back. “I say, I’ve parked the pig. What would you like to do? Mother and father are out but they’ll be back before dinner and my brother Oliver is coming down from London. He works there. We might walk down to meet him. I suppose you wouldn’t like to see the presents would you?” said Lucy, faintly embarrassed. “It’s awfully good of people to send one so many presents, but it’s pretty awful remembering which is which. I mean the cards mostly seem to get lost or something. Is your room all right? Don’t ring the bell because it doesn’t work and it usually comes down with a bang. That’s how Anne Hathaway’s chimney got broken. We’re pretty shabby, but we’ve still got some nice linen, only I’m not much good at mending.”

Miss Dale said, quite truthfully, that she loved the room, and began to examine the sheets and pillowcases and towels.

“You have got some lovely linen,” she said. “Perhaps your mother wouldn’t mind my doing some mending when I’ve finished my other work. I would love it.”

Lucy, though surprised by this peculiar form of pleasure, said she was sure her mother would be very grateful for help and then took Miss Dale down to the drawing-room, where, as we know, the wedding presents were beginning to accumulate in horrid confusion.

“It’s enough to make one wish one weren’t going to be married,” said Lucy despondently.

Miss Dale said there was something to be said for cheques, because then you could buy what you wanted.

“The trouble is we really don’t need them,” said Lucy. “Mr. Adams is very rich and I’ve got two hundred a year of my own and he is going to make a settlement or something. I don’t know. I say, do look at old Lady Norton’s present.”

Miss Dale gazed with horrified respect at a small bronze statuette of a gorilla carrying off—doubtless with the best intentions—a naked female in whose hand was a branch with an electric light at the end of it.

“Lord!” she said.

“I know,” said Lucy. “And I ought to have thanked her a week ago, but it’s so ghastly I don’t know what to say. I say, Miss Dale, do you really know what one ought to say about presents one doesn’t like?”

Miss Dale suddenly felt very sorry for her hostess. She was not going to run her head into the noose of friendship without looking, but she felt a kind of compassion for Lucy Marling, so ignorant of the most ordinary rules of society, so entirely unspoiled by the prospect of riches, so capable, so bewildered. Her own life had stopped, or the core of it had, long ago. To help Lucy Marling would at least give one the illusion of being useful.

“It is certainly difficult to feel grateful for the gorilla,” said Miss Dale, “but I’m sure we can invent something.”

“It would be most awfully useful if you could,” said Lucy. “I’m frightfully busy with the market garden just now, and mother keeps on wanting me to think about clothes but I simply haven’t time. I say, it’s awfully good of you to come. It’s rather ghastly here sometimes. I mean father and mother are angels but—oh well, I don’t know. Sorry,” and she looked with dislike at her wedding presents and then away into the garden.

Miss Dale said nothing and went on inspecting the presents, a great many of which were very good ones, generously and affectionately given. As one’s own life was finished and one’s heart desolate, one could at least try not to intrude one’s loss; one could possibly make things easier for people like Lucy who were ignorant of so much in spite of intelligence, energy, and goodwill.

“At any rate,” she said, “we can make a shot at it. And to begin with, please call me Isabel. My people call me Bell, after an old aunt of father’s, but I like my real name.”

Lucy said she would love to and how lucky it was that there wasn’t a short for Lucy, as nobody could be called Looce, and it was time they went down to meet Oliver.

When the train stopped at Melicent Halt, Miss Dale saw a tall thin man get out, upon whom Lucy flung herself with abandon.

“Here’s Oliver,” she said as proudly as a dog who has found a ball thrown by its master. “This is Isabel Dale. She’s come to stay and help mother and me with those ghastly wedding presents and all that rot.”

Miss Dale observed on a closer view that Mr. Oliver Marling had rather long hair, which she disliked, but brushed well back, which was better; that he wore very large horn spectacles and his eyes looked tired; that his town clothes were well cut and well kept and that he gave the impression that country clothes would not suit him so well; that like his sister Lucy he had long hands and feet, but while her hands were browned and battered and capable, his hands looked singularly useless. But all this took place in a second and when she said How do you do to Oliver Marling no one could have guessed all she had seen and thought. Their walk back to Marling Hall was enlivened by Lucy’s artless dissertation on the market garden, pigs, drains, and other useful subjects, which made general conversation almost impossible, and then dinner was ready.

During the war and the first years of so-called peace the Marling family had to some degree kept up the appearance of dressing for dinner, but gradually as servants melted away and clothes wore out and heating became more and more difficult they had given up the unequal struggle. Lucy was naturally the first to succumb, for her farm work kept her out till all hours, and when summer time kept the world light till far into the evening it seemed unreasonable to make oneself clean only to get dirty again. Her parents had at one time shown a slightly rebellious spirit about breeches at the dinner table, but had finally given in. Oliver had also tried to keep up some kind of standard, but as his evening clothes wore out and could only be replaced at great expense of money and coupons by vastly inferior ones, he too had resigned himself. Coupons were now not needed, but the poor quality and terrifying price of clothes did not improve. So except in winter, when Mrs. Marling and Lucy wore woollen house-coats against the winter’s flaw, everyone dined in much the same clothes they had been wearing all day: as did the greater part of the world. There were indeed rumours from people who had been to London that the young girls were again wearing pretty frocks and the young men dinner jackets and even tails at dances, but to Barsetshire these things were small and undistinguishable, like far-off mountains turned into clouds; and they remained as they were.

“This is Miss Dale, William,” said Mrs. Marling to her husband, who had just come in with a very good imitation of a man stiff from a day’s hunting, though he had hardly been on a horse for the last two years. “She is going to help me and Lucy with the presents and Lucy’s clothes. You know—”

“Now, wait a minute,” said Mr. Marling, shaking hands with Miss Dale and letting himself down into his chair. “Dale. Now, your people are over Allington way, young lady.”

From some this might have appeared to be in the nature of a query, but so doggedly, nay threateningly did Mr. Marling say it that Miss Dale felt almost guilty.

“Now don’t tell me,” said Mr. Marling. “Your father’s a grandson of the Dale who married the girl with money, patent medicines or something. Used to see him on the Bench sometimes. Shot with him once in ’13, or was it ’14? What’s he doin’ now?”

Mrs. Marling and Oliver looked quickly and agonizedly at each other. Of course papa would put his foot in it and would probably put it in a good deal further before he had done. Miss Dale, who had very good manners and disliked seeing people embarrassed, said, quite truthfully: “I don’t exactly know, Mr. Marling. You see, he died ten years ago,” but her words were overpowered by Lucy, who, prefacing her words by a sotto voce “Isn’t father ghastly?” to Miss Dale, said in her most powerful voice: “He’s DEAD, father. You went to the funeral and got an awful cold.”

“Funeral?” said Mr. Marling, “whose funeral? Oh, I see. Beg your pardon, Miss Dale. I’m gettin’ an old fool and my memory’s not what it was. I know now. Shockin’ weather it was. Coldest I’ve ever known. Pomfret wouldn’t come into the church; said he was sure your father would understand if he sat in his car while the service was goin’ on. Took his hat off, of course. And he’s gone too. Well, I’m sorry, my dear. I’m not much longer for this world and I shan’t be sorry to go.”

Miss Dale was, or appeared to be, suitably impressed, yet managing to convey at the same time to Oliver and Lucy that she didn’t believe in their father’s intimations of mortality any more than they did, and the rest of the meal passed without any particular incident. After dinner Oliver and Lucy took Miss Dale round the garden in the warm autumn dusk and they talked about country and county matters and got on very well, and Lucy told Miss Dale about Heather Adams’s wedding and showed her the pale sapphire which, just as her betrothed had foretold, she wore day and night, whether working with her hands, or telling other people who were working with their hands what.

“Aren’t you afraid of losing the stone?” said Miss Dale.

“It’s awfully safe with these claws, and if it did fall out we’d buy another,” said Lucy simply, and Oliver marvelled at the way she took her future wealth for granted. Then she went to have a last look at the pig, and Oliver brought chairs onto the stone walk up against the warm west side of the house and he and Miss Dale sat there talking.

“You know Jessica Dean, don’t you?” she said presently.

As happened whenever that enchantress’s name was mentioned, a thousand little shafts of flame were shivered in Oliver’s bony frame (and we fear that on the whole he enjoyed this peculiar experience) and he said he did.

“We hear about them from Mrs. Lover,” said Miss Dale. “Her husband was the bank manager where my mother’s family lived in Loamshire.”

Oliver said politely that he was afraid he didn’t know Mrs. Lover.

“Aubrey’s mother,” said Miss Dale. “Aubrey’s real name, but of course you must know this, is Caleb Lover and he used to sign his letters C. Lover, because Caleb is such a dreadful name, and he writes so badly that it always looked like Clover. So then he needed a Christian name and chose Aubrey, because his mother’s name is Audrey.”

Most of this interesting story Oliver had heard, vaguely, at some time or another, but he had never heard the bit about Mrs. Lover’s name being Audrey and expressed an interest which, he hoped, entirely hid his complete want of it.

“Did you know they are going to have a baby?” said Miss Dale. Did Oliver know? Had his soul not been seared by the news? Had he not, on his midnight pallet lying (which was an uncommonly comfortable spring mattress) been smitten to the core by the thought, going so far in mortification and abnegation of self as to consider offering to be a godfather?

“Yes, isn’t it delightful?” he said. “Jessica says they are going to call it Sarah Siddons.”

Miss Dale said what would they call it if it was a boy, which inspired them both to such foolish suggestions as Harry Tate and David Garrick, and then it was cold, so they went in.

During the next weeks Miss Lucy Marling had occasion to tell her betrothed more than once that she wished they could go to a registrar’s office and get it over, so boring to her were the discussions about the when and the where of the wedding, but Mr. Adams with his usual good sense reminded her that the wedding was entirely to please her parents and the numerous friends of both contracting parties. Mrs. Marling was also exercised about Mr. Adams’s business friends to whom she wished to be polite and friendly while feeling in the depths of her heart that they had nothing in common whatsoever. Since Miss Dale had come to Marling Hall she had proved herself daily more sensible, intelligent, and useful and at last Mrs. Marling, choosing an evening when Mr. Marling had gone to dine at the County Club with Mr. Adams to talk over the lawyers’ proposals, opened her mind to Miss Dale and asked her advice.

“We would like our own church,” said Mrs. Marling, “only it’s so small. And the Dean, who has very nicely said he wants to marry Lucy himself—I mean do the marrying himself, I mean marrying Lucy—” and here she stopped, overcome by the difficulties of the English language.

“Yes?” said Miss Dale, in so understanding a way that Mrs. Marling plucked up courage and went on: “Of course it would be delightful if the Dean did it in the Cathedral, but it would mean borrowing a house in the Close for the reception as people could never get out here. And then I know Bishop Joram would like to help, only again we don’t want to offend the Vicar.”

She was silent, contemplating the difficulties of life.

“But, Mrs. Marling, surely they could all marry Lucy,” said Miss Dale. “Then we could get the Barchester Chronicle to put The ceremony was performed by the Dean of Barchester assisted by Canon Joram and the Vicar of Marling Melicent. Of course we’d have to get all the Reverends and things right, but your Vicar would know about that. And you could have the wedding and the reception here. We could make the drawing-room perfectly lovely.”

Mrs. Marling after a few minutes’ consideration said it seemed a very good plan and if her husband and Mr. Adams approved she would fix a date with the ecclesiastical gentlemen concerned.

“Then that’s all right,” said Miss Dale. “You will ask Mr. Marling of course. What about Mr. Adams?”

“Well, someone has got to do it,” said Mrs. Marling wearily, for she was beginning to agree with her daughter Lucy that the sooner the better. “I can’t give up my committees and the county work for three or four months just for a wedding. At least I really mean I don’t want to,” she added, overcome by an attack of honesty.

“But Mrs. Marling,” said Miss Dale, “you did engage me to help you. All you really need to do is to tell the Dean and Bishop Joram and the Vicar yourself, and then I can do the rest. And I know Miss Pickthorn, Mr. Adams’s secretary, because her sister was in the Red Cross with me in the war.”

Mrs. Marling was interested and grateful but not convinced, and her husband coming in at that moment, she put her difficulties before him.

“Most sensible thing I’ve heard yet,” said Mr. Marling. “No good keeping a dog and barking yourself, my dear. You’ve quite enough to do and here’s Miss Dale ready to help. Much better to have the wedding here. Pity my old uncle Fitzherbert Marling isn’t alive. The Archdeacon,” he added in an aside to Miss Dale. “He’d have married them. He laid a wager with old Belton, Belton’s father over at Harefield, that he’d ride five miles to drink a quart of claret and marry a couple within an hour, and he did it too.”

Miss Dale said it was a pity they couldn’t get the Bishop to make a bet like that as it would be such fun to see him lose it and burst all the buttons off his gaiters, at which Mr. Marling laughed so heartily that his wife felt she had done a very good deed in asking Miss Dale to spend the winter with them, for she had not seen her husband so well amused for a long time.

“Good girl,” said Mr. Marling approvingly. “I didn’t like to mention the Bishop before. You might have been one of the Palace lot and I wouldn’t like to hurt your feelings.”

“We all Hate and Despise the Bishop at Allington,” said Miss Dale with surprising energy, “that is, when we think of him, which is practically never. My father was at college with him and they used to call him Old Gasbags.”

So delighted was Mr. Marling by this intelligence that his wife was quite prepared for him to kiss Miss Dale by way of cementing his common dislike of the Bishop.

When once Mrs. Marling had made a decision she was prompt in action. She had a word with the Vicar, who was delighted that the wedding was to be at Marling Melicent and perfectly agreeable to the Dean and Bishop Joram officiating. She then made her husband write to the Dean himself, the letter being drafted by Miss Dale. His ready consent being obtained, she then rang up Bishop Joram and, with Miss Dale prompting her, secured his enthusiastic collaboration. As for Mr. Adams, Miss Dale and Miss Pickthorn arranged a meeting between him and Mr. Marling, during which both gentlemen were stricken with sudden self-consciousness, a state of mind foreign and disturbing to them, and showed every symptom of shying off the subject altogether. On the evening of the day on which this inconclusive talk had taken place, Miss Pickthorn and Miss Dale decided on the Thursday before Holy Week, and on the following day each gentleman was complimented by his secretary, or guest, on his choice of day. Lucy rather grudgingly said in public that she supposed Thursday would be all right, but went so far as to tell her affianced that it was the most heavenly day in the world, at which he was deeply moved.

The months moved on in their usual way. All the presents were acknowledged. After Christmas Jessica Dean asked Lucy to spend a fortnight with her in London, as she was shortly retiring into the private life for what she called The Last Days of Sarah Siddons, and worked even harder at taking Lucy to dressmakers and tailors and every kind of shop than she worked at the Cockspur. In vain did Lucy make her usual plea of Rot. It was impossible to contradict Jessica, especially at a moment when any contretemps might, so Lucy thought, produce a baby marked with some fatal sign that its mother had been thwarted.

“Bless you, my lamb,” said Jessica. “Do you think Sarah Siddons might have twelve toes because you don’t want to go to Madame Martha and have your face made over? You don’t know Sarah.”

“Nor do you, my love,” said Aubrey Clover. “She may have twenty toes and probably has by the look of her,” to which Jessica replied: “La, Clover, you are indeed a Horrid Coarse Wretch and before Miss, too,” and Lucy began to realize that interesting as were cows and pigs and other domestic animals, people in general and babies in particular might be just as interesting; and if Jessica could find a baby even more enthralling than the Cockspur, there must be something in them.

Oliver dined with them during her visit and could not but admire Jessica’s influence on his sister Lucy, who was vastly improved by Jessica’s bullying care and rather touchingly pleased by finding that one could take pains about one’s appearance without anyone thinking the worse of one.

On her last evening Oliver, who though he had renounced Jessica found it necessary to visit his sister Lucy at the Clovers’ flat, found Jessica and Aubrey alone.

“Lucy has gone to a film with one of the twins,” said Jessica, whose flat was always open to any of her family who had to be in London. “She won’t be long. Oh, here’s Miss Barchester. You don’t know her, do you? She is the Barchester Beauty Queen for this year and Aubrey is thinking of giving her a part in his new play,” and in came a tall handsome girl with slightly waved hair, wearing a very good tailor-made suit, who looked as if she had just come back from warm beaches in the south.

“Hold it, darling,” said Aubrey as Oliver rose to be introduced. “Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty. I’ve won.”

Oliver looked; and then felt and indeed appeared rather mad.

“It was only a joke,” said Miss Barchester, giving Oliver a bear-like hug which none but his sister Lucy could have given. “Aubrey betted me I could take you in for thirty seconds and I said I couldn’t possibly. Do you like it?” she asked anxiously.

“Of course I do,” said Oliver. “But what have you done?”

“Nothing, my sweet,” said Jessica, “except do what I told her. A bit of hair-do; a spot of face-do; a good belt, and I’ve told Miss M. to give the old one to the Cats’ Home; and an expensive but most repaying visit to a few good houses.”

“She doesn’t mean people’s houses,” said Lucy kindly to her brother. “She means dressmakers.”

“Not that word, my pet,” said Jessica shuddering. “And I’m coming to the wedding if it’s in a bath-chair, and if you don’t do everything I told you, I shall forbid the banns. By the way, Oliver, I told a lie about the twin. Lucy was having tea with her ironmaster. What did my charming Adams say to you, darling?”

“Oh, just rot about me looking nice,” said Lucy, sitting down.

Jessica screamed.

“Not in that suit, my lamb,” she said, sinking back in a stage faint. “Go and change it at once.”

Lucy got up obediently and went out. Miss M. looked in and said Was Mr. Marling staying to dinner.

“Is he?” said Jessica.

“I’d love to,” said Oliver, “but I’m afraid I can’t.”

Jessica looked at Aubrey Clover with a face of amused simulation of self-pity and held out a hand for Oliver to kiss.

“But why?” she asked.

“Isabel Dale is in town for the night,” said Oliver, “and I think she expects me to take her out.”

“Be an angel, Miss M., and ring her up and ask her to dinner,” said Jessica. “Mr. Marling will give you her number. I must go and tidy myself, for it’s no good calling it dressing for dinner with Sarah Siddons about.”

Oliver tried to protest, but Jessica had left the room, Lucy was not back, and Aubrey Clover was typing suddenly and violently in a corner. So presently Miss Dale came, delighted to see such famous people at close quarters and full of admiration for Jessica’s work on Lucy, and Oliver had the pleasure of watching his goddess and the girl, who though no goddess seemed to him more sympathetic than other girls, making great friends, while Aubrey plied Lucy with flattery, which, though she was not deceived by it, amused and pleased her.

“Well, my pretty one,” said Jessica when her guests had gone, “a penny for your thoughts.”

“I thought how kind you and Aubrey were and how I’d tell Mr. Adams all about it,” said Lucy.