combat a lot of
principles. It's absolutely heathenish to have principles in warm
weather anyway. Of course they are the proper things to have, but,
dear me, they _are_ such nuisances. It's all right to have them about
yourself, I suppose, but to have them about other people is priggish,
and quite useless, so far as I can see. My observation has taught me
that if you like a person it makes no difference whether their
principles coincide with your own or not, or even if they have none at
all; and if you don't like a person, it's downright irritating to have
to approve of them." Miss Bancroft's mental grammar, like much of her
spoken grammar, was inaccurate, of course; as in other matters, she
held rule to scorn, when the rule interfered with her personal
conception of what she was trying to make clear to other people or to
herself.

Under the vigorous thrust of her plump, direct forefinger, the
door-bell pealed clearly in the cool remote regions of the house.
Standing under the arch of the Norman doorway, she surveyed the broad,
shade-flecked lawns with interest and a sort of irritable appreciation.
Somewhere under the trees a gardener was raking the drive and burning
neat piles of warm, brown leaves, from which the pungent smoke ascended
in sinuous blue spirals, like languorously dancing phantoms of the dead
leaves; and the pleasant, rhythmic sound of the rake on the gravel
intensified the sober peaceful silence peculiar to that bachelor's
domain.

The door was opened.

"Tell Mr. Prescott that it's Miss Bancroft. Nonsense, I shan't sit
down in the drawing-room at all--it makes me feel like a member of the
Ladies' Aid come to petition a subscription for a new church carpet or
something. Tell Mr. Prescott that I'll be out on the porch."

"Will you come through this way, then, madam?" suggested the old
butler, meekly.

Miss Bancroft followed him, sighing a little with relief as the
coolness of the great hall, with its smell of old, polished wood and
waxed floors, closed about her.

"And, William," she called pathetically after the retreating butler,
"do put the kettle on!"

On her way through the house she passed a stately succession of large
rooms. A handsome drawing-room, with a polished parquetry floor, fit
for the dainty crimson heels of a laced and furbelowed French coquette;
its great glass chandelier shrouded in white tarlatan; the dining-room,
with high-wainscoted walls, on which hung three or fo