Within the drawing-room, before a low table, sits Miss Scrope, tatting industriously. Tatting is Miss Scrope's forte. She never does anything else. Multitudinous antimacassars, of all shapes, patterns, and dimensions, grow beneath her untiring touch with the most alarming rapidity. When finished, nobody knows what becomes of them, as they instantly disappear from view and are never heard of afterwards. They are as good as a ghost in Pullingham, and obstinately refuse to be laid. It was charitably, if weakly, suggested at one time, by a member of the stronger sex, that probably she sent them out in bales as coverings for the benighted heathen; but when it was explained to this misguided being that tatted antimacassars, as a rule, run to holes, and can be seen through, even he desisted from further attempts to solve the mystery. Miss Peyton, throwing up one of the window-sashes, steps boldly into the drawing-room and confronts this eminent tatter. "Good-morning," she says, sweetly, advancing with smiling lips. Miss Scrope, who has not heard her enter, turns slowly round: to say she started would be a gross calumny. Miss Scrope never starts. She merely raises her head with a sudden accession of dignity. Her dignity, as a rule, is not fascinating, and might go by another name. "Good-afternoon, Clarissa," she says, austerely. "I am sorry you should have been forced to make an entrance like a burglar. Has the hall door been removed? It used to stand in the front of the house." "I think it is there still," Miss Peyton ventures, meekly. "But"--prettily--"coming in through the window enabled me to see you at least one moment sooner. Shall I close it again?" "I beg you will not distress yourself about it," says Miss Scrope, rising to ring the bell. "When Collins comes in he will see to it." It is a wild day, though warm and sweet, and the wind outside is tearing madly over lawn and shrubberies into the wood beyond. "But in the mean time you will perhaps catch cold, of rheumatism, or something," says Clarissa, hesitating. "Rheumatism! pugh! nonsense!" says Miss Scrope, disdainfully. "I simply don't believe in rheumatism. It is nothing but nerves. I don't have those ridiculous pains and aches people hug nowadays, and I don't believe they have either; it employs their idle time trying to invent them." "Is Jim in?" asks Clarissa, presently, having seated herself in a horribly comfortless but probably artistic chair. "_James is_ in," says Miss Scrope, severely. "Do you mean my brother? It is really almost impossible to understand young people of the present age." "Don't you like the name Jim?" asks Clarissa, innocently, leaning slightly forward, and taking up the edge of Miss Scrope's last antimacassar to examine it with tender interest. "I think it such a dear little name, and so happily wanting in formality. I have never called him anything else since I can remember, so it comes most naturally to me."