me
any more. Norah felt very indignant with her trustee, and was convinced
that the loss was entirely his fault. She asked pathetically what was
the _use_ of having a trustee, and felt very Christian and forbearing,
because she was quite civil to him when they next met,--from all which
it will be gathered that Norah Boyce was a survival of the
old-fashioned, unworldly, more or less helpless young women of a past
generation. She had not been trained either to work, or to think for
herself; her education had not specialised on any one subject; her value
in the wage-earning market was exactly nil, and before the end of her
twenty-fifth year her income had fallen to nearly the same point.

It had been a year of calamity. Everything went wrong. A European war
sent down the prices of stocks and shares. A railway strike at home
swallowed up dividends; a bank failed; water leaked into an oil well,
and dried up on a rubber plantation. Norah had no time to recover from
one disaster before another burst upon her; while she was still
sorrowfully digesting the fact that a summer remittance was not to hand,
intelligence arrived that as regarded autumn payments, the trustee
regretfully pronounced no dividends. In short, Fortune, having smiled
upon the young woman for twenty-five years, had now turned her back with
a vengeance, until eventually she was face to face with the fact that in
future her work must be to earn, rather than to spend.

Mrs Ingram had played her usual part of confidante and consoler during
the year of upheaval, and the invitation had been given with the
intention of allowing "the poor little dear time to think." It would
not be tactful to exclude her from the general questioning that had
sprung out of New Year confidences, but in her heart the hostess shrank
from putting the question.

"And what do _you_ want, Norah? I think it's your turn!"

Contrary to expectation Norah did not look at all perturbed. She
shrugged her shoulders, and cried instantly, "Oh, Work, of course!
Plenty of work. At once. With a handsome remuneration, paid quarterly
in advance! It sounds very moral and praiseworthy, but it isn't a bit.
I'm not fond of work; I'd a great deal sooner go on amusing myself in my
own way. I've never had one scrap of longing to be a bachelor girl, and
live on my own, and cook sketchy meals on a greasy stove. I detest food
in the raw, and should never be able to eat it, after contending with it