e, her darling! How she glorified him, and exulted in him, and
rejoiced in every evidence of his beautiful manhood! The sight of the
thick-soled boots gave her a positive thrill of joy; she looked unmoved
at the mud on the carpet, and did not even wince when he crumpled her
best silk cushion behind his back.

Jim looked across, caught her glance, and flashed back an answering
message which made her heart swell with joy. Her boy loved her, and had
no fear to meet his mother's eye! That was all she wanted to know, and
she knew it without further questioning. Jim was not given to words;
and even if he wished to speak, how could the poor boy _get_ a chance,
with seven excited girls all talking to him at the same moment?

Jim listened blankly for some moments before he could understand the
drift of the remarks, but gradually the words "Sale" and "Bazaar"
disentangled themselves from the clamour and awoke a dim remembrance.

"Oh, the sale for the Mission! You did tell me something about it!
Coming off to-morrow, is it? That's a bore! Why didn't you get it over
before I came?"

The girls shrieked aloud in dismay, and, under cover of their protests,
Maud whispered an eager--

"Take an interest in it, do! They have worked so hard, poor dears, and
they want you to help!"--which had the effect of rousing him to the
importance of the position.

"All right, girls, I'll see you through!" he announced, with the self-
confidence which a man assumes as if by instinct in discussions with his
womenkind. He had the vaguest ideas of what was expected, no knowledge
at all of the difficulties of the position; but it never occurred to him
to doubt his own ability to overcome these difficulties, and put the
final triumphant touch on the girls' labours.

"I'll see you through!" he repeated; and his sisters chorused their
thanks and murmured grateful acknowledgments, while Kitty Maitland kept
silent and eyed him askance through her spectacles, registering a vow to
speak faithfully on the subject of masculine vanity on the first
convenient opportunity.

The next morning each of the six Rendell girls awoke with a start and a
shiver of dismay. What had happened? For a moment they could not tell,
yet a cloud of depression was there; and then, alas! in each case a
glance at the window answered the question. Down fell the rain,
splashing the panes, soaking the trees, turning the paths into pools of
water, weighing down the heads o