“And suppose she repeats her mother’s experience,” suggested Joan. “No hope of happy endings,” she said with a forced laugh. “Couldn’t marry him I suppose?”!

“No,” the child answered. “Mama had a headache this morning, and I slipped out. You’re not keeping your promise.” “Hullo!” she said. “Are you two concluding a bargain?”

It seemed to her that it was she that they were laughing at, pointing her out to one another, jeering at her, reviling her, threatening her. She would stand behind Phillips’s chair with her fat arms round his neck, nodding her approval and encouragement; while Joan, seated opposite, would strain every nerve to keep her brain fixed upon the argument, never daring to look at poor Phillips’s wretched face, with its pleading, apologetic eyes, lest she should burst into hysterical laughter. She hoped she was being helpful and inspiring! Mrs. Phillips would assure her afterwards that she had been wonderful. As for herself, there were periods when she hadn’t the faintest idea about what she was talking. “Nature appears to have only one idea in her head,” she continued after a pause, “so far as we men and women are concerned. She’s been kinder to the lower animals.”