stretched out her hand for the matches and lit a
cigarette. Then she blew a cloud of speculative smoke into the air.

"I don't know," she said slowly. Adding whimsically: "I believe that's
the root of the trouble."

Penelope regarded her critically.

"I'll tell you what's the matter," she returned. "During the war you
lived on excitement--"

"I worked jolly hard," interpolated Nan indignantly.

The other's eyes softened.

"I know you worked," she said quickly. "Like a brick. But all the same
you did live on excitement--narrow shaves of death during air-raids,
dances galore, and beautiful boys in khaki, home on leave in convenient
rotation, to take you anywhere and everywhere. You felt you were working
for them and they knew they were fighting for you, and the whole four
years was just one pulsing, throbbing rush. Oh, I know! You were caught
up into it just the same as the rest of the world, and now that it's over
and normal existence is feebly struggling up to the surface again, you're
all to pieces, hugely dissatisfied, like everyone else."

"At least I'm in the fashion, then!"

Penelope smiled briefly.

"Small credit to you if you are," she retorted. "People are simply
shirking work nowadays. And you're as bad as anyone. You've not tried
to pick up the threads again--you're just idling round."

"It's catching, I expect," temporised Nan beguilingly.

But the lines on Penelope's face refused to relax.

"It's because it's easier to play than to work," she replied with grim
candour.

"Don't scold, Penny." Nan brought the influence of a pair of appealing
blue eyes to bear on the matter. "I really mean to begin work--soon."

"When?" demanded the other searchingly.

Nan's charming mouth, with its short, curved upper lip, widened into a
smile of friendly mockery.

"You don't expect me to supply you with the exact day and hour, do you?
Don't be so fearfully precise, Penny! I can't run myself on railway
time-table lines. You need never hope for it."

"I don't"--shortly. Adding, with a twinkle: "Even I'm not quite such an
optimist as that!"

As she spoke, Penelope laid down her sewing and stretched cramped arms
above her head.

"At this point," she observed, "the House adjourned for tea. Nan, it's
your week for domesticity. Go and make tea."

Nan scrambled up from the hearthrug obediently and disappeared into the
kitchen regions, while Penelope, curling herself up on a cushion in front