tandards, was assembling
her own forces and observed, in casting an eye over them, that she had
heard five times as much music as Miss Buckston and might be granted the
right of an opinion on it. She took satisfaction in a memory of Miss
Buckston's face singing in the Bach choir--even at the time it had
struck her as funny--at a concert to which Althea had gone with her some
years ago in London. It was to see, for her own private delectation, a
weak point in Miss Buckston's iron-clad personality to remember how very
funny she could look. Among the serried ranks of singing heads hers had
stood out with its rubicund energy, its air of mastery, the shining of
its eye-glasses and of its large white teeth; and while she sang Miss
Buckston had jerked her head rhythmically to one side and beaten time
with her hand as if to encourage and direct her less competent
companions. Sometimes, now, she looked almost as funny, when she sat
down to the piano and gave forth a recitative.

After Bach, Woman's Suffrage was Miss Buckston's special theme, and,
suspecting a new hint of uncertainty in Althea, whose conviction she had
always taken for granted, she attacked her frequently and mercilessly.

'Pooh, my dear,' she would say, 'don't quote your frothy American women
to me. Americans have no social conscience. That's the trouble with you
all; rank individualists, every one of you. When the political attitude
of the average citizen is that of the ostrich keeping his head in the
sand so that he shan't see what the country's coming to, what can you
expect of the women? Your arguments don't affect the suffrage question,
they merely dismiss America. I shall lose my temper if you trot them
out to me.' Miss Buckston never lost her temper, however; other people's
opinions counted too little with her for that.

At the end of the first week Althea felt distinctly that though the
country, even under these dismal climatic conditions, might be
delightful if shared with some people, it was not delightful shared with
Miss Buckston. She did not like walking in the rain; she was a creature
of houses, cabs and carriages. The sober beauty of blotted silhouettes,
and misty, rolling hills at evening when the clouds lifted over the
sunset, did not appeal to her. She wished that she had stayed in London;
she wished that Helen and Mr. Digby were with her; she was even glad
that Aunt Julia and the girls were coming.

There was a welcome diversion afforded fo