slip at the end of the quay. Priscilla still
seemed fresh and vigorous.

"I wonder," said Frank, "if we could hire a boy."

"Dozens," said Priscilla, "if you want them... What for?"

"To wheel that bath-chair. I can't walk, you know. And I don't like to
think of your pushing me up the hill. You must be tired."

"That," said Priscilla, "is what I call real politeness. There are lots
of other kinds of politeness which aren't worth tuppence. But that kind
is rather nice. It makes me feel quite grown up. All the same I'll wheel
you home."

She pushed the bath-chair up the hill from the village without any
obvious effort. At the gate of the avenue she stopped. Two small
children were playing just inside it. A rather larger child set on the
doorstep of the gate lodge with a baby on her knee.

"What time is it, Cousin Frank?" said Priscilla.

"It's ten minutes past seven."

"Susan Ann, where's your mother?"

The girl with the baby on her knee struggled to her feet and answered:

"She's up at the house beyond, Miss."

"I just thought she must be," said Priscilla, "when I saw William Thomas
and the other boy playing there, and you nursing the baby. If your
mother wasn't up at the house you'd all be in your beds."

She wheeled the bath-chair on until she turned the corner of the avenue
and was lost to the sight of the children who peered after her. Then she
paused.

"Cousin Frank," she said, "it's just as well for you to be prepared for
some kind of fuss when we get home."

"We're awfully late, I know."

"It's not that. It's something far worse. The fuss that's going on up
there at the present moment is a thunderstorm compared to what there
would be over our being late."

"How do you know there's a fuss?"

"Before she was married," said Priscilla, "Mrs. Geraghty--that's the
woman at the gate lodge, the mother of those four children--was our upper
housemaid. Aunt Juliet simply loved her. She rubs her into all the other
servants day and night. She says she was the only sufficient housemaid.
I'm not sure that that's quite the right word. It may be efficient Any
how she says she's the only something-or-other-ficient housemaid she
ever had; which of course is a grand thing for Mrs. Geraghty, though
not really as nice as it seems, because whenever anything perfectly
appalling happens Aunt Juliet sends for her. Then she and Aunt Juliet
rag the other servants until things get smoothed out again. The minute I
saw th