lent her name were organized so admirably
that by the time the takings were handed over, they were indeed skim
milk divested of all cream of human kindness. But as she often justly
remarked, sentiment was to be deprecated. She was, in fact, a little
academic.

This great and good woman, so highly thought of in ecclesiastical
circles, was one of the principal priestesses in the temple of
Forsyteism, keeping alive day and night a sacred flame to the God of
Property, whose altar is inscribed with those inspiring words: 'Nothing
for nothing, and really remarkably little for sixpence.'

When she entered a room it was felt that something substantial had come
in, which was probably the reason of her popularity as a patroness.
People liked something substantial when they had paid money for it; and
they would look at her--surrounded by her staff in charity ballrooms,
with her high nose and her broad, square figure, attired in an uniform
covered with sequins--as though she were a general.

The only thing against her was that she had not a double name. She was a
power in upper middle-class society, with its hundred sets and circles,
all intersecting on the common battlefield of charity functions, and
on that battlefield brushing skirts so pleasantly with the skirts
of Society with the capital 'S.' She was a power in society with the
smaller 's,' that larger, more significant, and more powerful body,
where the commercially Christian institutions, maxims, and 'principle,'
which Mrs. Baynes embodied, were real life-blood, circulating freely,
real business currency, not merely the sterilized imitation that flowed
in the veins of smaller Society with the larger 'S.' People who knew her
felt her to be sound--a sound woman, who never gave herself away, nor
anything else, if she could possibly help it.

She had been on the worst sort of terms with Bosinney's father, who had
not infrequently made her the object of an unpardonable ridicule. She
alluded to him now that he was gone as her 'poor, dear, irreverend
brother.'

She greeted June with the careful effusion of which she was a mistress,
a little afraid of her as far as a woman of her eminence in the
commercial and Christian world could be afraid--for so slight a girl
June had a great dignity, the fearlessness of her eyes gave her that.
And Mrs. Baynes, too, shrewdly recognized that behind the uncompromising
frankness of June's manner there was much of the Forsyte. If the girl
ha