“Then we’ll say Monday. No, Tuesday--that will give us time to make a cake. I must ask some more of your relations to meet you, dear. And, Nancy, we must be careful with the cake; Maria’s are always so excellent, and she is so critical. And now run out, dear, and tell Evergreen I’ll come in a moment. I’m afraid he won’t like being kept in the mist.” On Tuesday Jethro, who was driving into Liddleshorn, dropped Pamela at Turle. She stood and watched him out of sight, admiring the smartly turned-out trap and his broad back in the light covert coat. Then she went, with lagging feet, up the drive. Turle was an old house which had been improved into an appearance of juvenility. Mr. Turle bought it when he retired with a comfortable fortune from the milling--a comfortable fortune, and a determination on the part of his wife--to end his days as a gentleman. He spent so much money that people forgot that he had been a miller. When he died his widow was actually on the skirts of small gentrydom. She was a diplomatic woman, and managed to steer fairly clear of family connections who were still in superior family trade. She drove her social four-in-hand skillfully, and kept several distinct sets in perfect balance, smiling on them all with the same motherly, expansive sweetness, yet never offending the aristocratic susceptibilities of Mrs. Sugden, the Paper King’s wife, who called on her twice a year, nor hurting the feelings of the Jeremy Crisp girls, whose father still carried on the family grocer’s business in Liddleshorn. Pamela liked Turle. The farm-buildings were hidden, the surrounding meadows had been knocked into a miniature park and planted with trees. They were young trees, but everything must have a beginning. When she was announced she saw that the big drawing-room was full of strange women. She looked hurriedly from one face to another, finding family characteristics everywhere. Mrs. Turle kissed her. “You don’t look quite up to the mark,” she said affectionately. “A touch of bile?” She was introduced to all of them; handed over from one to another, like a bale of samples. They had been engrossed at her entrance over a big box of fancy work. One of the Jeremy Crisp girls--who was only a girl by courtesy--went into elderly raptures over a woolwork jacket, which looked a capital fit for an organ-grinder’s monkey, and was intended for a baby. “The box comes round to us once a quarter,” Mrs. Turle explained. “It goes round to all members. Every member works something, prices it, puts it in the box, and sends it on to another member. If we see anything we like we buy it.” Pamela was beginning to find out that her new cousins and aunts were tremendously busy women--over nothing at all; that they had a frenzy for belonging to classes and societies; that they took themselves and their efforts very seriously.