common, greeted with the word "Sister!" the photograph of a very
young, very beautiful, very gracile creature, in a mannish costume
that emphasized her femininity, in a foreign garden, in a braw hat
with curls cascading from under it, with a throat lilying out of a
flaring collar, with hands pocketed in a smart jacket, and below that
a pair of most fashionable legs in riding-breeches and puttees! She
carried not a parasol nor a riding-crop, but a great reaping-hook
swung across her shoulder, and she smiled as impudently, as
immortally, as if she were Youth and had slain old Time and carried
off his scythe.

The picture did not reply to Mrs. Nuddle's cry, but Mrs. Nuddle's
eldest daughter, a precocious little adventuress of eleven or so, who
was generally called "Sister," turned from the young brother whose
smutty face she was just smacking and snapped:

"Aw, whatcha want?"

Little Sister supposed that her irritating mother was going to tell
her to stop doing something, or to start doing something--either of
which behests she always hated and only obeyed because her mother was
bigger than she was. She turned and saw her mother swaying and
clutching at the air. Sister had a gorgeous hope that mother would
fall into the tub and be interesting for once. But mother was a born
disappointer. She shook off the promising swoon, righted herself, and
began fiercely to scan the paper to find out whose name the picture
bore. The caption was torn off.

Being absolutely sure who it was, she wanted to find out who it really
was.

In her frantic curiosity she remembered that her husband had stripped
off a corner of the paper, dipped it in the stove, lighted his pipe
with it, thrown it flaming on the floor, spat it out with practised
accuracy, and trodden it as he went away. Mrs. Nuddle ran to pick it
up.

On the charred remnant she read:

The Beautiful Miss.... One of London's reigning beaut.... daughter
of Sir Joseph W.... doing farm work on the estate in....

Mrs. Nuddle sniffed no more. She flopped to a backless chair and
squatted in a curious burlesque of Rodin's statue of "The Thinker."
One heavy hand pinched her dewlap. Her hair was damp with steam and
raining about her face. Her old waist was half buttoned, and no one
would have regretted if it had been all buttoned. She was as plebeian
as an ash-can and as full of old embers.

She was still immobilized when her husband came in. Now he gasped. His
wife was loafi