"I've tried to write you fully," he said. "I hoped I gave you a--a
picture of the way we lived."

"You did. You have," said Jeffrey, still with that air of getting
nowhere and being greatly irritated by it. "But how could I know how
much these girls are sacrificing?"

"Sacrificing?" repeated the colonel helplessly, and Lydia was on the
point of another explosion when Jeffrey himself held up his hand to her.

"Wait," he said. "Let me think. I don't know how to get on with people.
They only make me mad."

That put a different face on it. Anne knew what he meant. Here he was,
he for whom they had meant to erect arches of welcome, floored in a
moment by the perplexities of family life.

"Of course," said Anne. She often said "of course" to show her sympathy.
"You tell it your own way."

"Ah!" said Jeffrey, with a breath of gratitude. "Now you're talking.
Don't you see----" he faced Anne as the only person present whose
emotions weren't likely to get the upper hand----"don't you see I've got
to know how father's fixed before I make any plans for myself?"

Anne nodded.

"We live pretty simply," she said, "but we can live. I keep the
accounts. I can tell you how much we spend."

The colonel had got hold of himself now.

"I have twelve hundred a year," he said. "We do very well on that. I
don't actually know how, except that Anne is such a good manager. She
and Lydia have earned quite a little, dancing, but I always insisted on
their keeping that for their own use."

Here Jeffrey looked at Anne and found her pinker than she had been. Anne
was thinking she rather wished she had not been so free with her offer
of accounts.

"Dancing," said he. "Yes. You wrote me. Do you like to dance?"

He had turned upon Lydia.

"Oh, yes," said she. "It's heavenly. Anne doesn't. Except when she's
teaching children."

"What made you learn dancing?" he asked Anne.

"We wanted to do something," she said guiltily. She was afraid her
tongue was going to betray her and tell the story of the lean year after
their mother died when they found out that mother had lived a life of
magnificent deception as to the ease of housekeeping on twelve hundred a
year.

"Yes," said Jeffrey, "but dancing? Why'd you pick out that?"

"We couldn't do anything else," said Lydia impatiently. "Anne and I
don't know anything in particular." She thought he might have been
clever enough to see that, while too tactful to betray it. "But we look
nice--tog