an
hour ago, containing a stamped telegraph form, and Aunt Margaret
was not one to be trifled with.

Since breakfast the three had talked of nothing else, and from the
very first Mrs. Bunting had said that Daisy ought to go--that there
was no doubt about it, that it did not admit of discussion. But
discuss it they all did, and for once Bunting stood up to his wife.
But that, as was natural, only made his Ellen harder and more set
on her own view.

"What the child says is true," he observed. "It isn't as if you
was quite well. You've been took bad twice in the last few days
--you can't deny of it, Ellen. Why shouldn't I just take a bus
and go over and see Margaret? I'd tell her just how it is. She'd
understand, bless you!"

"I won't have you doing nothing of the sort!" cried Mrs. Bunting,
speaking almost as passionately as her stepdaughter had done.
"Haven't I a right to be ill, haven't I a right to be took bad,
aye, and to feel all right again--same as other people?"

Daisy turned round and clasped her hands. "Oh, Ellen!" she cried;
"do say that you can't spare me! I don't want to go across to that
horrid old dungeon of a place."

"Do as you like," said Mrs. Bunting sullenly. "I'm fair tired of
you both! There'll come a day, Daisy, when you'll know, like me,
that money is the main thing that matters in this world; and when
your Aunt Margaret's left her savings to somebody else just because
you wouldn't spend a few days with her this Christmas, then you'll
know what it's like to go without--you'll know what a fool you
were, and that nothing can't alter it any more!"

And then, with victory actually in her grasp, poor Daisy saw it
snatched from her.

"Ellen is right," Bunting said heavily. "Money does matter--a
terrible deal--though I never thought to hear Ellen say 'twas the
only thing that mattered. But 'twould be foolish--very, very
foolish, my girl, to offend your Aunt Margaret. It'll only be
two days after all--two days isn't a very long time."

But Daisy did not hear her father's last words. She had already
rushed from the room, and gone down to the kitchen to hide her
childish tears of disappointment--the childish tears which came
because she was beginning to be a woman, with a woman's natural
instinct for building her own human nest.

Aunt Margaret was not one to tolerate the comings of any strange
young man, and she had a peculiar dislike to the police.

"Who'd ever have thought she'd have minded