tended to convey
displeasure. Joanna felt unhappy, and anxious to conciliate him, but she
was aware that any reconciliation was bound to lead to a repetition of
that conduct so eminently shocking to the occupants of passing
motor-buses. "I don't like London folk to think I don't know how to
behave when I come up to town," she said to herself.

Luckily, just as the situation was becoming unbearable, and her
respectability on the verge of collapsing in the cause of peace, they
stopped at the gate of The Elms, Raymond Avenue, Lewisham. Bertie's
annoyance was swallowed up in the double anxiety of introducing her to
his family and his family to her. On both counts he felt a little
gloomy, for he did not think much of his mother and sister and did not
expect Joanna to think much of them. At the same time there was no
denying that Jo was and looked a good bit older than he, and his mother
and sister were quite capable of thinking he was marrying her for her
money. She was looking rather worn and dragged this afternoon, after her
unaccustomed railway journey--sometimes you really wouldn't take her for
more than thirty, but to-day she was looking her full age.

"Mother--Agatha--this is Jo."

Joanna swooped down on the old lady with a loud kiss.

"Pleased to meet you," said Mrs. Hill in a subdued voice. She was very
short and small and frail-looking, and wore a cap--for the same reason
no doubt that she kept an aspidistra in the dining-room window, went to
church at eleven o'clock on Sundays, and had given birth to Agatha and
Albert.

Agatha was evidently within a year or two of her brother's age, and she
had his large, melting eyes, and his hair that sprang in a dark
semicircle from a low forehead. She was most elegantly dressed in a
peek-a-boo blouse, hobble skirt, and high-heeled shoes.

"Pleased to meet you," she said, and Joanna kissed her too.

"Is tea ready?" asked Bertie.

"It will be in a minute, dear--I can hear Her getting it."

They could all do that, but Bertie seemed annoyed that they should be
kept waiting.

"You might have had it ready," he said, "I expect you're tired, Jo."

"Oh, not so terrible, thanks," said Joanna, who felt sorry for her
future mother-in-law being asked to keep tea stewing in the pot against
the uncertain arrival of travellers. But, as it happened, she did feel
rather tired, and was glad when the door was suddenly kicked open and a
large tea-tray was brought in and set down violen