ed
the part of a well-meaning blight by reason of the moods that arose
from nervous dyspepsia. They went to Florence, equipped with various
introductions and much sound advice from sympathetic Cambridge friends,
and having acquired an ease in Italy there, went on to Siena, Orvieto,
and at last Rome. They returned, if I remember rightly, by Pisa,
Genoa, Milan and Paris. Six months or more they had had abroad, and now
Margaret was back in Burslem, in health again and consciously a very
civilised person.

New ideas were abroad, it was Maytime and a spring of abundant
flowers--daffodils were particularly good that year--and Mrs. Seddon
celebrated her return by giving an afternoon reception at short notice,
with the clear intention of letting every one out into the garden if the
weather held.

The Seddons had a big old farmhouse modified to modern ideas of comfort
on the road out towards Misterton, with an orchard that had been rather
pleasantly subdued from use to ornament. It had rich blossoming cherry
and apple trees. Large patches of grass full of nodding yellow trumpets
had been left amidst the not too precisely mown grass, which was as
it were grass path with an occasional lapse into lawn or glade. And
Margaret, hatless, with the fair hair above her thin, delicately pink
face very simply done, came to meet our rather too consciously dressed
party,--we had come in the motor four strong, with my aunt in grey silk.
Margaret wore a soft flowing flowered blue dress of diaphanous material,
all unconnected with the fashion and tied with pretty ribbons, like a
slenderer, unbountiful Primavera.

It was one of those May days that ape the light and heat of summer, and
I remember disconnectedly quite a number of brightly lit figures and
groups walking about, and a white gate between orchard and garden and a
large lawn with an oak tree and a red Georgian house with a verandah and
open French windows, through which the tea drinking had come out upon
the moss-edged flagstones even as Mrs. Seddon had planned.

The party was almost entirely feminine except for a little curate with
a large head, a good voice and a radiant manner, who was obviously
attracted by Margaret, and two or three young husbands still
sufficiently addicted to their wives to accompany them. One of them
I recall as a quite romantic figure with abundant blond curly hair on
which was poised a grey felt hat encircled by a refined black band. He
wore, moreover, a l