He hesitated, keeping his eyes upon the ground. “Don’t forget your promise,” he reminded her, when they parted. “I shall tell Mary she may write to you.”!

“What do you gather is the general opinion?” Joan asked. “That he will succeed?” “No,” he answered. “She wrote me a beautiful letter that I shall always keep, begging me to forgive her, and hoping I might be happy. She had married a young farmer, and was going out to Canada. My mother will never allow her name to be mentioned in our house.”

Joan murmured her sense of favour, but hoped she would not be allowed to interfere with more pressing calls upon Mr. Phillips’s time. “I shall ask you to marry me when your hair is white,” he said. “May I?” They discussed life on two thousand a year; the problems it would present; and Mrs. Phillips became more cheerful. Joan laid herself out to be friendly. She hoped to establish an influence over Mrs. Phillips that should be for the poor lady’s good; and, as she felt instinctively, for poor Phillips’s also. It was not an unpleasing face. Underneath the paint, it was kind and womanly. Joan was sure he would like it better clean. A few months’ attention to diet would make a decent figure of her and improve her wind. Joan watched her spreading the butter a quarter of an inch thick upon her toast and restrained with difficulty the impulse to take it away from her. And her clothes! Joan had seen guys carried through the streets on the fifth of November that were less obtrusive.