ave
had many congratulations on your pupils' performance." Then she held
out her hand with a charming smile. "I hope you will have very pleasant
holidays!"

She made no inquiries as to the way in which this young girl was to
spend her leisure. She herself was worn-out with the strain of the long
term, and when the morrow came she intended to pack her bag, and start
off for a sunny Swiss height, where for the next few weeks it would be
her chief aim to forget that she had ever seen a school. But the new
French mistress turned away with a heavy heart. It seemed at that
moment as if nobody cared.

That year Christmas fell on a Monday. On the Saturday morning Cecil
packed up her bag, and departed, grumbling, for her week at home.
Before she left, Claire presented her with a Christmas gift in the shape
of a charming embroidered scarf, and Cecil kissed her, and flushed, and
looked at the same time pleased and oppressed, and hastily pulling out
her purse extracted two sovereigns and laid them down on the table.

"I keep forgetting that money! Three weeks, wasn't it? There's two
pounds; let me know the rest when I come back and I'll settle up.
Christmas is an awful time. The money simply melts."

Claire had an uncomfortable and wholly unreasonable feeling of being
paid for her present as she put the two sovereigns in her purse. Cecil
had given her no gift, and the lack of the kindly attention increased
the feeling of desolation with which she returned to her empty room.
Even the tiniest offering to show that she had been thought of, would
have been a comfort!

The landlady came into the room to remove the luncheon tray, her lips
pursed into an expression which her lodger recognised as the preliminary
to "a bit of my mind." When the outlying cruets and dishes had been
crowded together in a perilous pile, the bit of her mind came out.

"I was going to say, miss, that of course you will arrange to dine out
on Christmas Day. I never take ladies as a rule, but Miss Rhodes, she
said, being teachers, you would be away all holiday time. I never had a
lodger before who stayed in the house over Christmas, and of course you
must understand that we go over to Highgate to my mother's for the day
and the girl goes out, and I couldn't possibly think of cooking--"

"Don't be afraid, Mrs Mason. I am going out for the day."

Mrs Mason lifted the tray and carried it out of the room, shutting the
door behind her by the skilf