'How is Prue?' asks Mrs. Evans, discarding the Peerage. 'Mr. Evans met her yesterday on Wanborough Common, five miles away from home. Do you think it is wise to let her take such long walks?' 'I did not know that she had been so far,' answers Peggy dispiritedly. 'I do not like her looks,' continues the other, consulting Peggy's face with a placid eye, full of that comfortable and easy-sitting compassion with which our neighbours' anxieties are apt to inspire us. 'Do you ever give her cod-liver oil?' 'She has been taking it for the last two months.' 'Or malt? Malt is an excellent thing; the extract, you know--half a glass taken after meals. It did wonders for Billy. No one would have known him for the same boy.' 'I have tried that too.' 'I expect that what she wants is change of air,' says Mrs. Evans, shaking her head as she thrusts her hand into the foot of a stocking, running an experienced eye over the area of its injuries. 'Could not you manage to give her a little?' For an instant Margaret is silent; then she says abruptly: 'Lady Betty Harborough has invited her to pay her a visit.' '_Lady Betty Harborough!_' cries Mrs. Evans, dropping stocking and darning-needle. 'Dear me! what luck some people have! And you, too? No? I wish she had asked you too.' It is the measure of how low Peggy has fallen that she goes nigh to echoing this wish. 'Well, she must be a very kind-hearted woman,' pursues Mrs. Evans, resuming her darning-needle, 'as well as a very pretty one. And what a charming voice she has! That was a horrid song she sang; I did not hear the words very clearly myself. Mr. Evans says it was just as well that I did not; but how well she sang it! What spirit! When does Prue go?' 'I--I--am not sure that she is going at all.' 'I would not put it off longer than I could help, if I were you,' says Mrs. Evans. 'Do not you think that she has fallen away a good deal of late? And such an opportunity may not come again in a hurry. Dear me!' with a sigh and a glance towards the two babies and the stocking-basket, 'some people are in luck!' It is evident that Margaret is not destined to draw much consolation from her visits to-day. At the gate Mr. Evans is waiting to greet her, having routed that numerous detachment of his offspring which was ornamenting it on Peggy's arrival. There are day's on which Mr. Evans's children appear to him intolerably ugly, and his lot unbearably sordid. On such days he lies under a tree, reading Morris's _Earthly Paradise_, and his family give him a wide berth. 'How is Miss Prue?' he asks, holding the gate open for her to pass through. 'I met her yesterday on Wanborough Common, looking like a----' 'Yes, yes, I know,' interrupts Peggy, almost rudely. 'Mrs. Evans told me.'