On the present morning everything was as it should be. Her hair “settled itself” as though by magic, the girls had given no possible cause of complaint; she came down to breakfast with an air of surprise and the kind of mind that is quite sure something unpleasant is going to happen simply because nothing unpleasant _has_ “happened” so far. She presented, as she came down the hotel staircase, a delightful picture of neat compact charm; her girls, in precise and maidenly attendance behind her, accentuated her short stature by their own rather raw, long-legged size, but there was nothing loose or uncouth about her. In her colouring, in her light carnation silk waistband, in her high-heeled shiny shoes, she was neatness personified. In the eyes of everyone except Mrs. Lawrence she had perhaps just a little too much the air of being “somebody,” because really, of course, she was nothing at all, simply Mrs. Maradick of Epsom; but then when you were so small you had to do something to make up for it, and an “air” did help undoubtedly. Her husband, coming in from the garden, met her at the bottom of the stairs, and she treated him very graciously. He kissed the girls with a “Well, Lucy!” and “Well, Annie!” and then Mrs. Maradick, with a final feeling for her hair and a last pat to the carnation riband, led the way in to breakfast. It appeared that she was inclined to treat him graciously, but in reality she was trying to make up her mind; she was not a clever woman, and she had never been so puzzled before.