ore for fear she should offend Caroline and be left
without any help in the house.

But she suffered an almost physical ache from the readjustment of her
behaviour to the changed conditions of life as she went upstairs to her
bedroom. It was constantly happening like that--there was no time for
the irritation to subside before something roused it again. And Miss
Ethel took no comfort from the fact that all over the world people were
more or less suffering in the same way, because she only vaguely
realized that this was so.

She knew, however, that she felt humiliated as she handed over the
latch-key to Caroline, contrary to all her own principles, just before
the girl went out to collect tickets on the promenade during the dinner
interval.

The morning was cold for the first week in June, but a brief spell of
August weather in May had acted as a bait to the visitors that
Thorhaven lived on now, just as it used to live on the crabs and
mackerel and codling and shrimps caught in the bay. But that time was
so entirely over and done with that there were not enough real
fishermen left to man the lifeboat, and the smell of fish and brine had
departed, even from the narrow alleys in the old part of the town where
it had been for hundreds of years. Now the owners of the smallest and
most inconvenient cottages hung clean curtains, put "To Let, Furnished"
bills in the windows, and went off to camp in booths, tents, out-houses
or in any place where they could find shelter.

So this morning, though it was still so early in the year, provident
mothers with little children, and others bent on a cheaper holiday than
August could afford, were walking in light dresses about the roads,
emerging gaily from little front gates, clustering round the little
bright shops with their piles of fruit and cakes and sweets. It was a
bright-coloured company that Caroline saw about the streets as she went
along the road towards the familiar row of yellowish-red houses where
the Creddles lived.

Mrs. Creddle was ironing, and she looked up from the board almost in
tears as her niece entered the kitchen. "Oh, Carrie," she began at
once, "I thought you'd be coming. I am in such a way. I don't know
whatever you'll say to me, but I've burnt a great place on the front
width of your dress. I was pressing it out, because you'd got it all
crumpled up in your drawer upstairs, and then Winnie tumbled down on
the fender and made her nose bleed. You