edge of the
bookcase, folded up the green cloth, and began rapidly to lay the tea.
Simultaneously Maggie, glancing at the clock, closed up her
sewing-machine, and deposited her work in a basket. Clara, leaving the
table, stooped to pick up the bits of cotton and white stuff that
littered the carpet. The clock struck six.

"Now, sharpy!" she exclaimed curtly to Edwin, who stood hesitatingly
with his hands in his pockets. "Can't you help Maggie to push that
sewing-machine into the corner?"

"What on earth's up?" he inquired vaguely, but starting forward to help
Maggie.

"She'll be here in a minute," said Maggie, almost under her breath, as
she fitted on the cover of the sewing-machine.

"Who?" asked Edwin. "Oh! Auntie! I'd forgotten it was her night."

"As if anyone could forget!" murmured Clara, with sarcastic unbelief.

By this time the table was completely set.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

SIX.

Edwin wondered mildly, as he often wondered, at the extremely bitter
tone in which Clara always referred to their Aunt Clara Hamps,--when
Mrs Hamps was not there. Even Maggie's private attitude to Auntie
Clara was scarcely more Christian. Mrs Hamps was the widowed younger
sister of their mother, and she had taken a certain share in the
supervision of Darius Clayhanger's domestic affairs after the death of
Mrs Clayhanger. This latter fact might account, partially but not
wholly, for the intense and steady dislike in which she was held by
Maggie, Clara, and Mrs Nixon. Clara hated her own name because she had
been `called after' her auntie. Mr Clayhanger `got on' excellently
with his sister-in-law. He `thought highly' of her, and was indeed
proud to have her for a relative. In their father's presence the girls
never showed their dislike of Mrs Hamps; it was a secret pleasure
shared between them and Mrs Nixon, and only disclosed to Edwin because
the girls were indifferent to what Edwin might think. They casually
despised him for somehow liking his auntie, for not seeing through her
wiles; but they could count on his loyalty to themselves.

"Are you ready for tea, or aren't you?" Clara asked him. She
frequently spoke to him as if she was the elder instead of the younger.

"Yes," he said. "But I must find father."

He went off, but he did not find his father in the shop, and after a few
futile minutes he returned upstairs. Mrs Nixon preceded him, carrying