rowsy to notice anything much. But it was excellent practice for me. I
wake now at seven o'clock as a matter of course, whatever time I go to
bed. I made my own dresses and most of our cakes, and took care to let
everybody know it. Though I say it who should not, I play and sing
rather well. I certainly was never a fool. I had no little brothers and
sisters to whom to be exceptionally devoted, but I had my cousins about
the house as much as possible, and damaged their characters, if anything,
by over-indulgence. My dear, it never caught even a curate! I am not
one of those women to run down men; I think them delightful creatures,
and in a general way I find them very intelligent. But where their
hearts are concerned it is the girl with the frizzy hair, who wants two
people to help her over the stile, that is their idea of an angel. No
man could fall in love with me; he couldn't if he tried. That I can
understand; but"--Miss Ramsbotham sunk her voice to a more confidential
tone--"what I cannot understand is that I have never fallen in love with
any man, because I like them all."

"You have given the explanation yourself," suggested the bosom friend--one
Susan Fossett, the "Aunt Emma" of _The Ladies' Journal_, a nice woman,
but talkative. "You are too sensible."

Miss Ramsbotham shook her head, "I should just love to fall in love. When
I think about it, I feel quite ashamed of myself for not having done so."

Whether it was this idea, namely, that it was her duty, or whether it was
that passion came to her, unsought, somewhat late in life, and therefore
all the stronger, she herself would perhaps have been unable to declare.
Certain only it is that at over thirty years of age this clever,
sensible, clear-seeing woman fell to sighing and blushing, starting and
stammering at the sounding of a name, as though for all the world she had
been a love-sick girl in her teens.

Susan Fossett, her bosom friend, brought the strange tidings to Bohemia
one foggy November afternoon, her opportunity being a tea-party given by
Peter Hope to commemorate the birthday of his adopted daughter and sub-
editor, Jane Helen, commonly called Tommy. The actual date of Tommy's
birthday was known only to the gods; but out of the London mist to
wifeless, childless Peter she had come the evening of a certain November
the eighteenth, and therefore by Peter and his friends November the
eighteenth had been marked upon the calendar as a day