She is a handsomer woman than before. Her figure has decidedly taken on dignity, and the colour of her face is a healthy brown pink. Her cheeks, thanks to the best skill of the Blaydon dentist, have lost their sunken hollows and her eyes have deepened from the effect of well-being and contented activity. She bears herself with some authority too, having taken a favoured place in her division of the housework. Her hair is greying very slightly over the ears and temples, but her step is as quick and her back as straight as a girl’s. She wears a blue uniform with sleeves rolled up and a white apron. As she reaches the entrance portico, her arms overflowing with the yellow and brown and purple flowers, a little girl of six or so with dark hair bursts from the screen door. “Ellney, Ellney. Give me a cookie. I’m hungry.” “Can’t you wait till dinner, Miss Moira? Your mother wouldn’t like it.” “Oh, what’s one cookie? _Maman_ won’t mind just one.” “She will if she finds out, and if you don’t eat your dinner. It’s me that will get the lecture, not you!”--and with a look backward into the past, Ellen thinks of a boy who was once always asking for something to eat. The boy’s face has so dimmed in her mind now that if there is a resemblance she does not notice it. “_Maman_ shan’t lecture you, Ellney. I shan’t ever let her lecture you.” Ellen laughs, not only at what Moira says, but at the way she says it. She cannot ever get over the fact that her own child--who is now no longer her child--speaks the King’s English quite as carefully as her well-bred elders, and has adopted an air of superiority in her own right. But in Ellen’s laughter there is no ridicule. It is the sheer pleasure of maternal pride. Does not Moira, they say, speak French almost as well as English? “You little darling,” she cries, stooping and endeavouring to take the child’s hand in spite of her overflowing burden, “I’ll give you just one.” “No, two, Ellney--but one is for Hal, on my word. Isn’t it funny, he’s afraid to ask!” Ellen thought there never had been a child whose laughter was more like everything good and who laughed more often than Moira.... * * * * *