nough to push a pram?"

He glanced at my grey locks, and said tactfully:--

"Bobby could walk part of the time. Kensington is fortunately flat.
Miss Harding, I--I am very grateful. It's most awfully good of you to
worry about such perfect strangers. If you _will_ relieve my wife for a
few days, I shall be most awfully grateful!"

So it was arranged. I danced a jig of joy when I went back to my room,
and caught sight of my elderly reflection doing it in the glass, and
laughed till I cried. My work had begun. The thin end of the wedge had
wormed its way in. Now to push forward.

Mrs Manners has another malady besides her cough. It's an obscure
disease, but I have diagnosed it as "chronic inflammation of the
conscience". For four long years she has been kept incessantly at work,
looking after house and children, and has been unable to have one
undisturbed hour, either by day or by night. Now, when she gets the
chance, her conscience is horrified at the prospect. The first time I
took the children for their afternoon walk I found, on my return, that
she had used the time to turn out a cupboard, and looked more tired than
ever. The next day I sent the maid downstairs to settle the children in
the perambulator, when I produced a hot-water bottle from under my coat,
and had a heart to heart talk with her there and then.

"Mrs Manners, I am going to take you into your bedroom, tuck you up
under the quilt, give you this hot-water bottle to cuddle, pull down the
blinds, and leave you to rest there till we come in."

She positively shook with horror.

"Oh, Miss Harding, I _can't_. It is quite impossible! All that time?
If you knew all I have to do. There is another cupboard--"

"Mrs Manners, if you think I am taking charge of the children out of
consideration for your cupboards, you are mistaken. I am doing it so
that you may rest. A bargain is a bargain, and you are not playing
fair. Now, are you coming, or are you not?"

She came, not daring to refuse, but protesting all the way.

"Well, if I must--For a little time. For half an hour. I couldn't
_possibly_ rest more than half an hour."

"You've got to try. If I'm on duty for two hours, so are you. Don't
dare to move from this bed till I give you leave."

It was pathetic to see her thin little face peering at me over the edge
of the eider-down, quite dazed, if you please, at the idea of a two
hours' rest! I felt as happy as a grig as I ran down