Ten minutes later, with the victorious inconsistency of their race, they were shaking with laughter over the new Bairnsfather drawings. The next day—already it was his last day but one—was a festival: Mrs. Cloud was to come down to tea and to stay up to dinner. She had no business to do either, as she and Laura and the doctor knew, but—Mrs. Cloud was coming down! They bargained with the doctor. If it were a fine warm day—(But it was wet and cold.) If she kept quiet all the morning—(“Then you must look after Justin, Laura!”) If she promised to go to bed again really early—— If—if—— In short——Mrs. Cloud was coming down. Hard upon Laura to be bothered with Justin, wasn’t it? When she was so particularly busy; when she had promised the Depôt more work than she knew how to get through. But she made no objection whatever: came downstairs to him with obliging readiness: sat listening with an air that might have been mistaken for satisfaction, to the windy rain thudding at the windows. No going out in such rain! She took up her half-finished sock and then had to put it down again to help Justin. Justin was raking through the bookshelves. “Here—what can I take back? Something solid. I’m sick to death of sevenpennies. Mother is comical, you know. She’s got twice my brains—but the books she chooses!” He laughed: “I know she goes by the cover.” “You’ve read all these.” Laura ran her hand along the shelves. “No good giving you poetry, I suppose?” She pulled out _Men and Women_. “Remember how Oliver was always spouting the Italian things?” He sighed. “He gave me that book too, poor devil!” She looked at him, startled. “Why—what?” “Didn’t you see it? Artists’ Rifles. Shot, his first week out.” “_Oliver?_” He looked at her with a sad enough smile. “Brings it home a bit, doesn’t it?” She shook her head incredulously. “I never saw it. I never knew.” And then: “His poor wife——” Justin lit his pipe. “I only met her once. She’s married again, I believe.” There was a silence, with Laura whipping over page after page of the volume in her hand. Suddenly she flamed out— “Such women—such women——They make you ashamed.” Her eyes were pitiless. Justin frowned thoughtfully. “I don’t know. I don’t suppose he left her much to live on. And she was an awfully pretty girl.” But at that, after one look flashed at him, she stared the more resolutely at her book, lest he should see the amazement, the quick incredulous appreciation, in her eyes. There had been no superiority in his voice—nothing but the real tolerance of comprehension! It was not he, but she, Laura, who stood reproved for a lack of common charity.... Poor—young—an awfully pretty girl!... He was right.... It was not for them to judge.... But what had happened to Justin that he could see it and say it?... In a bewilderment so near happiness that it frightened her, she began to talk at random. “Yes—yes—I suppose so. Well—will you take it then? There’s heaps of reading in it.”