haven't had a single drop of in-bed tea all
the time I've been away!"

That was all she found words to tell her mother. Later there was Edward,
and she told him most things, but, I imagine, not all. But the mother
was content without spoken confidences. She knew that Maisie had
suffered, and that now she had her little girl again, to wrap warm in
her love as before. This was happiness enough.

* * * * *

This story, I know, is instructive enough for a Sunday School prize. It
ought to be tagged at the end with a Moral. I can't help it: it is true.
Of course, it is not what usually happens. Many companions, no doubt,
marry Honourable James's, or even Dukes, and are never at all glad to
get home to their mothers and their Edwards. But Maisie was different.
She feels now a sort of grateful tenderness for Yalding Towers, because,
but for the dream she dreamed there she might never have really
awakened--never have known fully and without mistake what it was in life
that she truly cared for. And such knowledge is half the secret of
happiness. That, by the way, is really the moral of this story.

IX

THE OLD WIFE

"Yes; married by the 30th of June, introduce my wife to the tenants on
Christmas Eve, or no fortune. That was my uncle's last and worst joke;
he was reputed a funny man in his time. The alternatives are pretty
ghastly either way."

"Doesn't that rather depend?" Sylvia queried, with a swift blue glance
from under veiling lashes.

Michael answered her with a look, the male counterpart of her own, from
dark Devon eyes, the upper lid arched in a perfect semicircle over pure
grey. "Yes; but my wife must have a hundred a year of her own in
Consols, to protect me from fortune-hunters--lone, lorn lamb that I am!"

Sylvia emphasised the sigh with which she admitted her indigence. Her
pretty eyebrows owned plaintively that she, a struggling artist, had no
claim against the nation.

"Mary has just a hundred a year," she said, her voice low-toned as she
looked across the room to where, demure in braided locks and grey
camlet, her companion sat knitting.

"I daresay," Michael answered indifferently, following her eyes' flight
and her tone's low pitch; "but she's young. I shall advertise for an
elderly housekeeper. And _qui vivra verra_."

The words, lightly cast on the thin soil of a foolish word-play with a
pretty woman, bore fruit.

A week later Michael Wood stood aghast b