other still wrote to her at
intervals, begging her earnestly, pathetically, to marry him, and
sometimes she half thought she would.

But always Godfrey Radmore stood before the door of her heart,
imperiously, almost contemptuously, "shooing off" any would-be intruder.
And yet to-day she told herself, believing what she said, that she no
longer loved him. She remembered now, as if they had been uttered
yesterday, the cruel words he had flung at her during their last hour
together when he had taunted her with not giving up everything and going
off with him--and that though she had known that there was, even then, a
part of his acute, clever brain telling him insistently that she would
be a drag on him in his new life.... She had also been cut to the heart
that Godfrey had not written to her father when his one-time closest
friend, her twin-brother, George, had been killed.

To-day for the first time, Betty Tosswill told herself that perhaps she
had been mistaken in doing right instead of wrong, in coming here to help
Janet with her far from easy task with the younger children, instead of
getting a good job, as she knew she could have done, after the War.

There is a modern type of young woman, quite a good young woman, too,
who, in Betty's position, would have thought that it was far better that
she should go out and earn, say, three or four pounds a week, sending
half the money, or a third of the money, home. But poor Betty was no
self-deceiver--she was well aware that what was wanted at Old Place in
the difficult months, aye, and even years, which would follow the end of
the Great War, was personal service.

And so she had come home, making no favour of it, settling into her often
tiring and tiresome duties, trying now and again to make Rosamund and
Dolly do their share. In a way they did try, but they were both very
selfish in their different ways, and only Janet knew all that everyone
of them owed to Betty's hard, continuous work, and sense of order. Not
that the girl was perfect by any means; now and again she would say a
very sharp, sarcastic word, but on the whole she was wonderfully
indulgent, kindly and understanding--more like a mother than a sister
to the others.

Everyday life is a mosaic of infinitely little things, whatever those who
write and talk may say. Betty had come back and settled down to life at
home, mainly because her step-mother could no longer "carry on." Janet
could not get servants, and i