ithout her.

"I don't know," she said, "what he _will_ have done without me all this
time."

Her mother looked at her sharply, a look that, though outwardly
concentrated on Aggie, suggested much inward criticism of Aggie's husband.

"He must learn to do without you," she said, severely.

"I'm not sure that I want him to," said Aggie, and smiled.

Her mother submitted with a heavy heart.

"My dear," she whispered, "if you had married John Hurst we shouldn't have
_had_ to say good-bye."

"I wouldn't have taken him from Susie for the world," said Aggie, grimly.
She knew that her mother had never liked poor Arthur. This knowledge
prevented her from being sufficiently grateful to John for always leaving
his trap (the trap that was once to have been hers) at her disposal. It
was waiting to take her to the station now.

Aggie had only seen her sister, Mrs. John Hurst, once since they had both
married. Whenever Aggie was in Queningford, John and Susie were in
Switzerland, on the honeymoon that, for the happy, prosperous couple,
renewed itself every year.

This year it was agreed that, when the Hursts came up to Islington for the
Grand Horse-Show in the spring, they were to be put up at the Gattys' in
Camden Town.

Aggie was excited and a little alarmed at the prospect of this visit.
Susie was accustomed to having everything very nice and comfortable about
her, and she would be critical of the villa and its ways. And, then, it
would be awkward seeing John. She smiled. It always had been awkward
seeing John.

But when the spring came a new terror was added to Aggie's hospitable
anxiety, a new embarrassment to the general awkwardness of seeing John.

After all, the Hursts put up at a hotel in town. But Susie was to come
over for tea and a long talk with Aggie, John following later.

Aggie prepared with many tremors for the meeting with her sister. She made
herself quite sick and faint in her long battling with her hair. She had
so little time for "doing" it that it had become very difficult to "do"
and when it was "done" she said to herself that it looked abominable. Her
fingers shook as they strained at the hooks of the shabby gown that was
her "best." She had found somewhere a muslin scarf that, knotted and
twined with desperate ingenuity, produced something of the effect that she
desired.

Up-stairs in the nursery, Catty, very wise for six years old, was minding
the baby, while the little nervous maid got tea r