hen
table."

"Then I expect the cat has eaten it," said Mrs. Caniper with
resignation, but her mouth widened delightfully into what might have
been its natural shape. "Miriam, go and put it in the larder."

Surreptitiously and in farewell, Miriam dropped the poker on Helen's
toes. "Why can't she send you?" she muttered. "It's your turbot."

"But it's your cat."

Wearing what the Canipers called her deaf expression, their stepmother
looked at the closing door. "I did not hear what Miriam said," she
remarked blandly.

"She was talking to me."

"Oh!" Mrs. Caniper flushed slowly. "It is discourteous to have private
conversations in public, Helen. I have tried to impress that on
you--unsuccessfully, it seems; but remember that I have tried."

"Yes, thank you," Helen said, with serious politeness. She made a
movement unnatural to her in its violence, because she was forcing
herself to speak. "But you don't mind if the boys do things like that."
She hesitated and plunged again. "It's Miriam. You're not fair to her.
You never have been."

Over Mrs. Caniper's small face there swept changes of expression which
Helen was not to forget. Anger and surprise contended together, widening
her eyes and lips, and these were both overcome, after a struggle, by a
revelation of self-pity not less amazing to the woman than to the girl.

"Has she ever been fair to me?" Mildred Caniper asked stumblingly,
before she went in haste, and Helen knew well why she fumbled for the
door-handle.

The acute silence of the unhappy filled the room: John rose, collided
clumsily with the table and approached the hearth.

"Now, what did you do that for?" he said. "I can't stomach these family
affairs."

Helen smoothed her forehead and subdued the tragedy in her eyes. "I had
to do it," she breathed. "It was true, wasn't it?" She looked at Rupert,
but he was looking at the fire.

"True, yes," said John, "but it does Miriam no harm. A little
opposition--"

"No," said Helen, "no. We don't want to drive her to--to being silly."

"She is silly," John said.

"No," Helen said again. "She ought not to live here, that's all."

"She'll have to learn to. Anyhow"--he put his hands into his
pockets--"we can't have Notya looking like that. It's--it won't do."

"It's quite easy not to hurt people," Helen murmured; "but you had to
hurt her yourself, John, about your gardening."

"That was different," he said. He was a masculine creature. "I was
fighti