id set of croquet was for Pauline, who
delighted in the game and had been overwhelmed with sorrow because one
night, when mallets and balls "happened" to be left out on the lawn all
night, a vagrant cow with a depraved appetite came in and, as Paul said
mournfully, "went and chewed corners all over the balls."

For Lynn, who had been heard bewailing the fact that all the books she
loved had been left in the other house, was a large parcel containing
six of the most delightful fairy-books in the world.

And, most exciting of all, there were four volumes, thin certainly, but
most gaily bound and gilt-edged and padded up as well as possible with
thick paper and pictures--the books they had all written that day in the
summer-house.

There they lay, three bound in scarlet and one in green, _The Horty
Stepmother_, by Pauline Lomax; _The Fairy who Had_, by Lynn Lomax;
_There was a Dog_, by Muffie Lomax; and _The Mother who said No_, by Max
Lomax. Kate was delighted with them and said she would give much to be
at the elbow of the Judge and Mrs. Lomax in New Zealand when these
choice volumes from their gifted offspring reached them.

For Miss Bibby too there was an offering.

"There aren't many modern women left who can fitly wear these things,"
Hugh said when he showed it to Kate, "but it struck me that it would
become a certain old-world air that lingers about Agnes Bibby."

"Ho, ho," said Kate to herself, and stole a glance at him; but she
allowed warmly that the thing was very pretty.

It was a chatelaine made of finely-fretted silver. The customary
thimble, scissors and other useful and feminine trifles dangled there,
but there was also added a delicately-chased case that might have been
expected to hold a bodkin, but contained indeed a very up-to-date
fountain-pen, gold-mounted.

"A woman without a waistcoat pocket for her fountain-pen has always
seemed such a pathetic object to me," Hugh said. "When you were a
business woman, K, it often moved me to internal tears to notice the
disadvantage you were at in this respect."

Kate acknowledged the disadvantage.

"Though I did stick to a skirt pocket long after the dressmakers had
declared them anathema," she said, "but there was always the danger of
sitting on your pen or having it leak a wide black mark in the back
width of your best frock. Even the sacred repository behind the ear that
will lodge a penny pen refuses to accommodate a stout and slippery
fountain on