ve, the plump, faded image of goodness, with Janet's full red
lips and Janet's kindly eyes, sat as usual, whether in winter or in
summer, near the fireplace, surveying with placidity the theatre where
the innumerable dramas of her motherhood had been enacted. Tom, her
eldest, the thin, spectacled lawyer, had, as a boy of seven, rampaged on
that identical Turkey hearthrug, when it was new, a quarter of a century
earlier. He was now seated at the grand piano with the youngest child,
Alicia, a gawky little treasure, always alternating between pertness and
timidity, aged twelve. Jimmie and Johnnie, young bloods of nineteen and
eighteen, were only present in their mother's heart, being in process of
establishing, by practice, the right to go forth into the world of an
evening and return when they chose without suffering too much from
family curiosity. Two other children--Marian, eldest daughter and sole
furnisher of grandchildren to the family, and Charlie, a young doctor--
were permanently away in London. Osmond Orgreave, the elegant and
faintly mocking father of the brood, a handsome grizzled man of between
fifty and sixty, was walking to and fro between the grand piano and the
small upright piano in the farther half of the room.

"Well, my dear?" said Mrs. Orgreave to Hilda. "You aren't wet?" She drew
Hilda towards her and stroked her shoulder, and then kissed her. The
embrace was to convey the mother's sympathy with Hilda in the ordeal of
the visit to Turnhill, and her satisfaction that the ordeal was now
over. The ageing lady seemed to kiss her on behalf of the entire
friendly family; all the others, appreciating the delicacy of the
situation, refrained from the peril of clumsy speech.

"Oh no, mother!" Janet exclaimed reassuringly. "We came up by car. And I
had my umbrella. And it only began to rain in earnest just as we got to
the gate."

"Very thoughtful of it, I'm sure!" piped the pig-tailed Alicia from the
piano. She could talk, in her pert moments, exactly like her brothers.

"Alicia, darling," said Janet coaxingly, as she sat on the sofa flanked
by the hat, gloves, and jacket which she had just taken off, "will you
run upstairs with these things, and take Hilda's too? I'm quite
exhausted. Father will swoon if I leave them here. I suppose he's
walking about because he's so proud of his new birthday slippers."

"But I'm just playing the symphony with Tom!" Alicia protested.

"I'll run up--I was just going to,"