convulsed suicide, who eludes
the coming grasp of her hand with eel-like dexterity, and has her round
the waist and drags her under water in a couple of seconds.

"There now!" says Sally triumphantly, as they stand spluttering and
choking in the shallow water to recover breath. "Didn't I do that
beautifully?"

"Well, but _anybody_ could like that. When real people are drowning
they don't do it like that." Miss Prince is rather rueful about it.
But Sally is exultant.

"Oh, don't they!" she says. "They're worse when it's real
drowning--heaps worse!" Whereon both the other girls affirm in chorus
that then nobody can be saved without the Humane Society's
drags--unless, indeed, you wait till they are insensible.

"Can't they?" says Sally, with supreme contempt. "We were both of us
drowned that time fair. But now you go and drown yourself, and see if
I don't fish you out. Fire away!"

They fire away, and the determined suicide plays her part with spirit.
But she is no match for the submarine tactics of her rescuer, who seems
just as happy under water as on land, and rising under her at the end
of a resolute deep plunge, makes a successful grasp at the head of her
prey, who is ignominiously towed into safety, doing her best to drown
herself to the last.

This little incident is so amusing and exciting that the three young
ladies, who walk home together westward, can talk of nothing but
rescues all the way to Notting Hill. Then Miss Henriette Prince goes on
alone, and as Laetitia and Sally turn off the main road towards the home
of the former, the latter says: "Now tell me about the row."

It wasn't exactly a row, it seemed; but it came to the same thing.
Mamma had made up her mind to be detestable about Julius Bradshaw--that
was the long and short of it. And Sally knew, said Laetitia, how
detestable mamma could be when she tried. If it wasn't for papa, Julius
Bradshaw would simply be said not-at-home to, and have to leave a card
and go. But she was going to go her own way and not be dictated to,
maternal authority or no. Perhaps the speaker felt that Sally was
mentally taking exception to universal revolt, for a flavour of excuse
or justification crept in.

"Well!--I can't help it. I _am_ twenty-four, after all. I shouldn't
say so if there was anything against him. But no man can be blamed for
a cruel conjunction of circumstances, and mamma may say what she likes,
but being in the office really makes all the differen