cosy boudoir and their favourite room. Hither came Mary when she
could escape from that treadmill of which she never spoke, bringing her
black-eyed boy to astonish his aunts with his cleverness, and
astonishing them herself with the heretical notions which an intimate
association with orthodoxy seemed to have implanted in her. But Bennet
was not admitted, nor any other outsider.

The little bricked hearth, when reminiscent wood fires burned on it,
was a pleasant gathering-place in cold weather; but it was the window
in the projecting gable towards which the sisters most commonly
converged. It was about eight feet long by two feet high, and close up
under it, nearly flush with its sill, stood a substantial
six-foot-by-four table, the chairs at either end comfortably filling
the rest of the alcove. They could sit here to write or sew, or drink
afternoon tea, and look out upon as pleasant a rural landscape--the
Malvern Hills--as any suburban villa could command. It was that view,
indeed, which had decided Deb to take the house.

There was, of course, a towny foreground to it; and this it was, rather
than the distant blue ranges, that held the gaze of Rose Pennycuick
when she looked forth--the back-yard of the villa next to their own. It
was a well-washed-and-swept enclosure, spacious and well-appointed, and
amongst its appointments displayed a semi-circular platform of
brickwork, slightly raised above the asphalted ground, and supporting
the biggest and best dog-kennel that she had ever seen.

"Those are nice people," she remarked, "for they have given their dog
as good a house as they have given themselves. Isn't it a beauty? I
wish to goodness everybody was as considerate for the poor things. I
wonder what sort of a dear beast it is?"

She watched so long for its appearance that she thought the kennel
untenanted, but presently saw a maid come out from the kitchen with a
tin dish. This she dumped upon the brick platform, turning her back
instantly; and a fine, ruffed, feather-tailed collie stepped over the
kennel threshold to get his dinner.

"Chained!" cried Rose. "And she never spoke to him!"

Deb looked over her shoulder, sympathetically concerned. "Is he really?
What a shame! I expect they are too awfully clean and tidy to stand a
dog's paws on anything; but no doubt they let him out for a run."

Rose waited for days, and never saw this happen. The master of the
house and a dapper young man, his son, went to t