fused all comfort,
sometimes even to the extent of remaining for days upstairs, and
neglecting the company of husband and child. Her attitude to Bess was
often peculiar, it was almost as if she resented her daughter being left
when her adored boys had been taken from her. Bess never knew how she
would be received, for sometimes her mother would seem unable to bear
her presence, and at other times would unreasonably chide her for
neglect. It began to dawn on Ingred how very lonely her friend must be.
She had secretly envied her the possession of Rotherwood, but now she
realized how little the house itself would mean without the happy home
life in which brothers and sister had borne their part.

"I'd rather have the bungalow with the family, than Rotherwood all
alone!" she ruminated. "As for Muvkins, she's one in a million. I
believe she'd be cheery in a coal cellar, so long as she'd a solitary
chick to keep under her wing. Why, if we'd lost _our_ boys, she'd have
been trying to make it up to Queenie and me for not having brothers. I
know her! That's her way!"

Bess had much to show to her visitor when tea in the dainty morning-room
was over. There were her books, and her photographs and postcard albums,
and all kinds of girlish possessions, and a cocker spaniel with three
puppies as fat as roly-poly puddings, and a fern-case opening out of one
of her bedroom windows, and a collection of pressed wild flowers, and a
green parroquet that would sit on her wrist, and allow her to stroke its
head, though it snapped at strangers. They had been working upwards
through the house, and finally Bess led the way to the top landing of
all. She paused for a moment before the door of an attic room.

"I expect you'll know this place!" she remarked shyly, ushering in her
guest.

Ingred looked round in amazement. It was a little sanctum which she and
Quenrede had shared in the old days as a kind of studio. Here they had
been allowed to try experiments in poker work, painting, fret-carving,
spatter-work, or any other operations which were considered too messy to
be performed in the school-room downstairs. They had loved their "den,"
as they called it, and had taken a particular pleasure in covering its
walls with pictures, cut, most of them, from magazines, and stuck on
with glue or paste. During the occupation of Rotherwood by the "Red
Cross," this room had been locked up, and Ingred had imagined that Mr.
Haselford would have had it pa