"Do you suppose," said Molly, "that, in Merry England, the milkmaids and shepherdesses danced about a maypole at thirty-two? For that's just exactly what I should like to do this minute! How absurd to be able to climb the Matterhorn, and then not to be let go out there and dance on that smooth bit of green!" "You might try it. Only I wouldn't answer for the conduct of the policeman by the tree. And if you're arrested, we can't dine to-night with Roger Michael." Roger Michael lived in a small, red, Georgian house in Chelsea. Her grandparents had lived here, and her parents, and she had been born here, nearer fifty than forty years ago. It had descended to her, and she lived here still. She had an old housekeeper and a beautiful cat, and two orphan children who were almost the happiest children in that part of the world. She always kept children in the house. There were a couple of others whom she had raised and who were out in the world, doing well, and when the two now with her were no longer children she would find another two. She did not believe in orphan asylums. She herself had never married. She remembered George Eliot, and she had known the Rossettis, and more slightly the Carlyles. Now in her small, distinguished house, with its atmosphere of plain living and high thinking, fragrant and sunny with kindliness and good will, she set her table often for her friends and drew them together in her simple, old-fashioned, book-overflowing drawing-room. Her friends were scholars, writing and thinking people, and simply good people, and any one who was in trouble and came to her, and many reformers. She was herself of old, reforming stock, and she served humanity in all those ways. She had met and liked the Josslyns when she was in America years before, and when they wrote and told her they were in London she promptly named this evening for them to come to Chelsea. They found besides Roger Michael a scientific man of name asked to meet Christopher, a writer of plays, a writer of essays, a noted Fabian, and as noted a woman reformer. The seventh guest was a little late. When she came, it was Hagar Ashendyne. "What an unexpected pleasure!" said the Josslyns, and meant every word of it. "How long since that summer at the New Springs? Almost nine years! And you've grown a great, famous woman--" "Not so very great, and not so very famous," said Hagar Ashendyne. "But I'm fortunate enough--to-night! You're a wind from home--you mountain-climbing, divine couple! The Bear's Den! Do you remember the day we climbed there?" "Yes!" said Molly; "and Judge Black waiting at the foot. Oh, I am glad to see you! We did not dream you were in London." "We--my father and I--have been here only a little while. All winter we were in Algeria. Then, suddenly, he wanted to see the Leonardos in the National."