“I always was a one for cheerful colours,” explained Mrs. Phillips. Mary Stopperton was afraid he never had, in spite of its being so near. “And yet he was a dear good Christian—in his way,” Mary Stopperton felt sure.!

“Tell me,” she said. “If it had been the photo of a woman with a bony throat and a beaky nose would you have read them?” She told Joan what she remembered herself of 1870. She had turned her country house into a hospital and had seen a good deal of the fighting.

He was looking at her with those shy, worshipping eyes of his that always made her marvel at her own wonderfulness. Joan had no intention of being lured into the Birmingham parlour. She thought she could see in it a scheme for her gradual entanglement. Besides, she was highly displeased. She had intended asking her father to come to Brighton with her. As a matter of fact, she had forgotten all about Christmas; and the idea only came into her head while explaining to Arthur how his impulsiveness had interfered with it. Arthur, crestfallen, suggested telegrams. It would be quite easy to alter everything; and of course her father would rather be with her, wherever it was. But it seemed it was too late. She ought to have been consulted. A sudden sense of proprietorship in her father came to her assistance and added pathos to her indignation. Of course, now, she would have to spend Christmas alone. She was far too busy to think of Birmingham. She could have managed Brighton. Argument founded on the length of journey to Birmingham as compared with the journey to Brighton she refused to be drawn into. Her feelings had been too deeply wounded to permit of descent into detail. “He had some shares in it himself, hadn’t he?” Joan asked.