the leave your father
could get. And there are a good many things we have to see to here.'

'Yes,' said Frances, 'there's the Christmas treat for the barracks
children. It's never been properly done. And Miss Lettice Piers is going
to invite us to their treat at St Wilfred's first, so that we may see.
I'd like best to have our visits to Robin Redbreast in the summer,
except that it must be rather dull for Lady Myrtle. She was so pleased
to have us there last Christmas.'

'I wish we could have her here,' said Mrs Mildmay. 'But she would never
be allowed to come up north in the winter.'

Jacinth sighed.

'It seems a good while since we heard from Lady Myrtle,' she said. 'I
hope she's not ill. I did think she would have _tried_ to get us there
for Christmas.'

'I don't think she can be ill,' said Mrs Mildmay, 'for your aunt would
have known it. She goes to see Lady Myrtle regularly. I shall be hearing
from Alison in a day or two, however.'

'Jassie,' said Frances, a moment or two later, when their mother had
left the room, 'I wish you wouldn't look so melancholy. Just think what
a lot of nice things have come to us, as well as the sad ones. Just
fancy how we should have been ready to jump out of our skins for joy if
we had known, when we left Stannesley, how soon papa and mamma would be
at home with us.'

'I know,' said Jacinth. 'I do try to think of all that. But I do so
dislike this gloomy place, Francie, and I think papa looks so fagged,
and we have scarcely any friends we care for; the people are all so
stupid, and so'----

'So what?'

'So rich,' said Jacinth, rather at a loss apparently what crime to lay
at the doors of the good folk of the manufacturing town who had incurred
her displeasure.

Frances laughed.

'That's not a sin,' she said. 'Lady Myrtle's rich, and so in a way, I
suppose, is Uncle Marmy.'

'I mean they seem to think of it so. Once or twice, when I've paid calls
with mamma, they were so fussy and show-off. You know how I mean,' said
Jacinth.

'Well, there are plenty of poor too, if that would make you like
Barmettle any better. Amy Piers says there are some dreadfully poor, and
she says that even the ones who get very big wages don't save at all,
and then if there comes a bad time--a bad time for trade, when some of
the people have to be turned off: it does come like that now and then,
she says, though I don't understand why--they are really starving.'

'They should be taught to sav