Now, isn't that better?"

Mrs Macmichel said that it was delightfully cosy. She was inwardly
shivering; the tips of her fingers felt like ice. She pulled off her
loose gloves, and held a pair of white hands blazing with jewels to the
flame. She must force herself to talk, and to keep the poor woman off
the topic of her son; but she, who was considered ready-tongued and
ready-witted, sat dumb, she had not a word to say.

"There is so much difference in chairs," she said, at length.

The banality did not affect Mrs Jones to laughter, as the speaker had a
fear it might have done. She seized eagerly on the remark.

"Isn't there? Some are straight in the back, and some slope too much
for comfort; some are too high in the seat for short legs, and some
quite ridiculously low."

"But this is perfect."

"I am so glad you find it so! It is Freddy's. It was one he bought when
he was in barracks. But he sent it to me. It was much too comfortable
to be anywhere but in his own home, he said. Isn't it delightful that
young men are so much attached to their homes, nowadays?"

It was indeed delightful, Mrs Macmichel answered; and added with an
effort the original remark that home was a delightful place.

She supposed it was, the other lady agreed. "I never go away from mine,
my health does not allow me," she said; "and so, perhaps, I can hardly
judge."

She looked round the rather dismal, rather shabby room with a something
critical in her gaze. Perhaps the presence of the fashionably-dressed
woman seated there--a person so evidently out of harmony with her
surroundings--helped her to see the familiar dowdiness with other eyes.
She gave a quick sigh as she looked, then turned to her visitor with
her nervous smile--

"It is a mercy Freddy does not see the old fashion, the shabbiness. He
only sees--home," she said.

Always Freddy! Poor Freddy, who would never see home again!

Searching wildly in her, at this crisis, stagnant mind for anything to
turn the poor woman from her subject, Mrs Macmichel remembered the
Parish Room. Here should be a mine of conversational wealth. She would
work it for all it was worth.

"My husband is so--interested in the scheme," she said, and gulped a
little at the lie. "Tell me over again, please, all those details you
gave me before. He would like to know how much you have in hand; what
you want to complete the room; what the bazaar brought in, and how much
you expect from the concert."

Mrs