As a rule the domestic wheel turned on oiled wheels and Miss Briskett's existence flowed on its even course, from one year's end to another, with little but the weather to differentiate one month from another, but on the day on which this history begins, a thunderbolt had fallen in the shape of a letter bearing a New York post-mark, which the postman handed in at the door of The Nook at the three o'clock delivery. Miss Briskett read its contents, and gasped; read them again, and trembled; read them a third time, and sat buried in thought for ten minutes by the clock, at the expiration of which time she opened her own desk, and penned a note to her friend and confidant, Mrs Ramsden, of The Holt-- "My dear Friend,--I have just received a communication from America which is causing me considerable perturbation. If your engagements will allow, I should be grateful if you will take tea with me this afternoon, and give me the benefit of your wise counsel. Pray send a verbal answer by bearer.--Yours sincerely,-- "Sophia A Briskett." The trim Mason took the note to its destination, and waited in the hall while Mrs Ramsden wrote her reply. The reference to a verbal answer was only a matter of form. Miss Briskett would have been surprised and affronted to receive so unceremonious a reply to her invitation-- "My dear Friend,--It will give me pleasure to take tea with you this afternoon, as you so kindly suggest. I trust that the anxiety under which you are labouring may be of a temporary nature, and shall be thankful indeed if I can in any way assist to bring about its solution.--Most truly yours,-- "Ellen Bean Ramsden." "The best china, Mason, and a teapot for two!" was Miss Briskett's order on receipt of this cordial response, and an hour later the two ladies sat in conclave over a daintily-spread table in the drawing-room of The Nook. Miss Briskett was a tall, thin woman of fifty-eight or sixty, wearing a white cap perched upon her grey hair, and an expression of frosty propriety on her thin, pointed features. Frosty is the adjective which most accurately describes her appearance. One felt a moral conviction that she would suffer from chilblains in winter, that the long, thin fingers must be cold to the touch, even on this bright May day; that the tip of her nose was colder still, that she could not go to sleep at night without a hot bottle to her feet. She was addicted to grey dresses, composed of stiff and shiny silk, and to grey bonnets glittering with steely beads. She creaked, as she moved, and her thin figure was whale-boned into an unnatural rigidity. Mrs Ramsden was, in appearance at least, a striking contrast to her friend, being a dumpy little woman, in whose demeanour good-nature vied with dignity. She was dressed in black, and affected an upright feather in front of her bonnets. "To give me height, my dear!"