uch a taking, Jane?
I suppose the family are away."

"Rubbish!" exclaimed her relative, sinking into a chair and dragging
off her gloves. "Did you ever know them all away together? Of course,
Mrs. Shafto goes gadding, and Douglas is at Sandhurst, but 'he' seldom
stirs. It is my opinion that something has happened. The Shaftos have
lived at 'Littlecote' for ten years, and I have never seen the blinds
down before to-day."

"Oh, you are so fussy and ready to imagine things!" grumbled Mitty, who
meanwhile had collected and pocketed the cards with surpassing
dexterity. "I don't forget the time when the curate had a smart lady
in his lodgings, and you nearly went out of your mind: rampaging up and
down the village, and telling everyone that the bishop must be
informed; and after all your outcry she turned out to be the young
man's mother!"

"That's true. I confess I was misled; but she made herself up to look
like a girl of twenty. You can't deny that she powdered her nose and
wore white shoes. But this is different. Drawn blinds are a sign of
trouble, and there is trouble at 'Littlecote,' as sure as my name is
Jane."

"Then, in that case, why don't you go up to the house and
inquire?"--The query suggested a challenge.

"_Mitty_! You know perfectly well that I have never been inside the
door since Mrs. Shafto was so rude to me about the book club, when I
wrote and protested against the 'loose' novels she put upon her list.
Why, you saw her letter yourself!"

Here a pause ensued, during which Miss Jane blew into every separate
finger of her gloves and folded them up with the neatest exactitude.
Presently she murmured with a meditative air:

"I was thinking of asking Eliza to run over."

"Oh, you may ask!" rejoined her sister, with a sniff of scorn, "but
Eliza won't stir. There's a beefsteak pudding for dinner. And that
reminds me that this is the egg woman's day, and I must see if she has
called. I shall want three dozen."

And without another word the elder Miss Tebbs bustled out of the room
and abandoned her relative to solitude and speculation.

Matilda and Jane Tebbs were the elderly orphans of a late vicar, and
still considered the parish and community of Tadpool their special
charge. Miss Jane was organist and Sunday school superintendent; Miss
Tebbs held mothers' meetings and controlled the maternity basket and
funds. Subsequent to their retirement from the vicarage the sisters
had known str