"I never want to see another pin-cushion so long as I live!" she announced tragically, as she tacked the label on the last of these useful articles, and tossed it impatiently to her companions. "If you charge more than one and six for that beauty, it's a cheat, for it's a regular museum of odds and ends. Heigho! this grows monotonous. Let me go out into the garden and begin preparations there. My master mind is wasted sitting here sewing on labels. I want scope--variety!" "You can't get it then, until you have finished the work on hand. It ought not to matter to you what you do, so long as you are helping forward," said Lilias severely. "To-morrow morning will be plenty of time to arrange the tables." "If it is fine! I am sorry to discourage you, but it is raining already. I see five drops on the window-pane," announced Elsie in a tone of satisfaction, born of the remembrance that she had "told them so!" months ago, and that they had refused to believe her; but her triumph was short-lived, for the girls only laughed at her five drops, called her their "faithful croaker," and altogether played such havoc with her dignity that she retired within her shell in displeasure. Had the occasion been less important, she would have flown to her room to pour out her woes to the ever-sympathetic diary; but no personal slight could be allowed to interfere with work to-day, for at four o'clock Jim would arrive, and never should it be said that the Rendell girls were engaged on their own devices when the one and only brother returned to his home! The first few hours after Jim's arrival could be spent in no other way than gazing upon him, in drinking in his words, and hanging around him in adoring admiration. By four o'clock the porch-room was abandoned, and each sister, attired in her best blouse and freshest skirt, was craning her head out of the dining-room window, while Kitty Maitland hovered in the background, scarcely less excited than themselves. He came. He stepped out of the fly, paid the cabman, and lounged up the path, lifting his head to nod in patronising fashion to his adorers. He was no Apollo of beauty, no Samson of strength, but just an ordinary-looking young man in an ordinary grey suit, with ordinary irregular features redeemed from plainness by an expression of quizzical good humour; yet each of the eight beholders gave a gasp of adoration as she beheld him. His mother's eyes swam with tears as she embraced her boy; Maud felt a ray of pure, unselfish happiness; even Lilias overlooked the fact that his collar was of an unfashionable shape in the delight of meeting. As for the younger girls, they fell upon him, and hugged and kissed, and kissed and hugged again, until he was obliged to beat them off with his long grey arms.