vely _tete-a-tete_ this will mean for Dick and you!"

"Yes--in the evenings. I'll love that!" confessed Bridgie, with the
candour of her race. "But oh, Pixie, the long, dull days, and no one to
laugh with me at the jokes the English can't see, or to make pretend!--"

"Ah!" mourned Pixie deeply, "I'll miss that, too! The times we've had,
imagining a fortune arriving by the afternoon post, and spending it all
before dinner! All the fun, and none of the trouble. But it's dull,
imagining all by oneself! And Dick's no good. He calls it waste of
time! I shall marry an Irishman, Bridgie, when my time comes!"

"Get into the train and don't talk nonsense!" said Bridgie firmly. She
felt it prophetic that on this eve of departure Pixie's remarks should
again touch on husbands and weddings, but not for the world would she
have hinted as much. She glanced at the other occupant of the
carriage--a stout, middle-aged woman, and was on the point of inviting
her chaperonage when a warning gleam in Pixie's eyes silenced the words
on her lips. So presently the train puffed out of the station, and
Bridgie Victor turned sadly homewards even as Pixie seated herself with
a bounce, and smiled complacently into space.

"That's over!" she said to herself with a sigh of relief, glad as ever,
to be done with painful things and able to look forward to the good to
come. "She thinks she's miserable, the darling, but she'll be as happy
as a grig the moment she gets back to Dick and the children. That's the
worst of living with married sisters! They can manage so well without
you. I'd prefer some one who was frantic if I turned my back--"

She smiled at the thought, and met an ingratiating smile upon the face
of her travelling companion. The companion was stout and elderly,
handsomely dressed, and evidently of a sociable disposition. It was the
height of her ambition on a railway journey to meet another woman to
whom she could shout confidences for hours upon end, but it was rarely
that her sentiments were returned. Fate had been kind to her to-day in
placing Pixie O'Shaughnessy in the same carriage.

"The young lady seemed quite distressed to leave you. Is she your
sister?"

"She is. Do you think we are alike?"

"I--I wouldn't go so far as to say _alike_!" the large lady said
blandly; "but there's a _look_! As I always say, there's no knowing
where you are with a family likeness. My eldest girl--May--takes after
her father