"Much obliged--but I prefer a live Mummy--and no clothes--to a dead one. More tea?" "Thanks. No chance, of course. Where could one find four persons a day, in Maumsey, or near Maumsey, who want to learn French? The notion's absurd. I shouldn't get the lessons I do, if it weren't for the 'Honourable.'" "Snobs!" "Not at all! Not a single family out of the people I go to deserve to be called snobs. It's the natural dramatic instinct in us all. You don't expect an 'Honourable' to be giving French lessons at half a crown an hour, and when she does, you say--'Hullo! Some screw loose, somewhere!'--and you at once feel a new interest in the French tongue, and ask her to come along. I don't mind it a bit. I sit and spin yarns about Drawing-rooms and Court balls, and it all helps.--When did you get home?" For Nora attended a High School in a neighbouring town, some five miles away, journeying there and back by train. "Half-past four. I met Mr. Winnington in his car, and he said he'd be here about six." "Good. I'm dying to talk to him. I have written to the Abbey to say we will call to-morrow. Of course, I ought to be her nursing mother in these parts"--said Lady Tonbridge reflectively--"I knew Sir Robert in frocks, and we were always pals. But my dear, it was I who hatched the cockatrice!" Nora nodded gravely. "It was I," pursued Lady Tonbridge, penitentially,--"who saddled him with that woman--and I know he never forgave me. He as good as told me so when we last met--for those few hours--at Basle. But how could I tell? How could anybody tell--she would turn out such a creature? I only knew that she had taken all kinds of honours. I thought I was sending him a treasure." "All the same you did it, Mummy. And it won't do to give yourself airs now! That's what Mr. Winnington says. You've got to help him out." "I say, don't talk secrets!" said a voice just outside the room. "For I can't help hearing 'em. May I come in?" And, pushing the half-open door, Mark Winnington stood smiling on the threshold. "I apologise. But your little maid let me in--and then vanished somewhere, like greased lightning--after a dog." "Oh, come in," said Lady Tonbridge, with resignation, extending at the same time a hand of welcome--"the little maid, as you call her, only came from your workhouse yesterday, and I haven't yet discovered a grain of sense in her. But she gets plenty of exercise. If she isn't chasing dogs, it's cats." "Don't you attack my schools," said Winnington seating himself at the tea-table. "They're A1, and you're very lucky to get one of my girls." Madeleine Tonbridge replied tartly, that if he was a poor-law guardian, and responsible for a barrack school it was no cause for boasting. She had not long parted with another of his girls, who had tried on her blouses, and gone out in her boots. She thought of offering the new girl a free and open choice of her wardrobe to begin with, so as to avoid unpleasantness.