e churchiest mouse!
Still, she'll gladly give up all her time if she may stay with you,
because she has no home that she can properly call a home."

"We should _want_ her to stay with us, of course!" they protested, both
together, as usual. "But, if she isn't kind----"

"Perhaps she could learn to be kind! She would try hard," I said meekly.
"Her name is Peggy O'Malley."

They thought I was joking at first; and when I'd made them understand
that I was in dead earnest, they shook their heads and looked dubious,
fearing it "wouldn't work."

"You see, my dear," Miss Emma explained, volubly assisted by Miss Jane,
"you are the only earl's daughter, or indeed _any_ member of the
aristocracy--higher than a knight's family--we have ever met
socially--if you can speak of this as 'socially'--being actually _thrown
together_, in all senses of the word, whenever they're in too great a
hurry to couple our train nicely, or when we fall out in a heap at some
wayside place like this. We don't flatter ourselves that you'd be likely
to select us for acquaintances if you were able to _choose_ at this
time; and you mightn't be pleased with our ways at home. We have kippers
for breakfast sometimes, and always cold supper Sunday nights."

I assured them passionately that if Providence had made them both
expressly for my taste, we couldn't be better suited to each other. As
for being an "earl's daughter," said I, there was nothing in that except
extra charges from dressmakers and hotels, and having things you had
never done attributed to you in paragraphs of penny weeklies. Then I
drew on all my funds of pathos, describing myself as unwanted and
unloved. This did the trick! The twin angels took me to their hearts and
promised me a place in their home and scheme. By the time we got on
board the boat they had dropped my handle and were calling me "Peggy
dear."

In London a crowd had come to the station expressly to welcome and cheer
us returning wanderers. And London was not the same London we had left a
few weeks ago. It was a city under a spell, a London of some strange
dream, all the stranger because the only change was in the people.
Later, it changed again, becoming almost gay and lively in outer
appearance, but at this time the balance was not adjusted.

Soldiers and recruits were marching through the streets, which but for
them and those who dazedly watched them were almost empty. Instead of
the mad herds of motor omnibuses, whic