Ellison, the plumber in Cross Loman, was a decent old fellow--he died a few months ago--a very ordinary type of the tradesman class. His wife had been dead many years and I knew nothing about her. I could not remember anything about the daughter except that I had always heard her spoken of by her full name--Diamond Ellison--and that the singularity of it had remained somewhere in the background of my memory. “I should like to see her,” I said. “You can see her if you go to the concert at the Drill Hall on the fourteenth,” Aileen Kendal told me. “She is singing.” “She’s musical, is she?” “I suppose so. Lady Annabel arranged it all.” “Why is Lady Annabel having a concert at all?” “Something to do with the Women’s Institute,” said Dolly. “You know she is always doing things for them, and she has quite worried Mumma about belonging, or letting us belong.” Mrs. Kendal still “lets” or does not “let” her daughters, in the minor as well as in the major affairs of life, although Blanche, the eldest, must be thirty-seven. “Mumma always says, ‘Be not the first by whom the new is tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside,’” Aileen solemnly quoted. “She says that Women’s Institutes are a new movement, and she wants to know rather more about them before she gives them her support.” The Kendals are not naturally sententious, but when they quote either Puppa or Mumma they become so to an unbearable degree. Claire, who is patient neither of sententiousness nor of quotations from other people, changed the subject. “I’ve taken tickets, Miles, of course. Shall you want to come? It will only be the usual kind of Cross Loman concert.” “Everybody is going, as usual. Nancy Fazackerly is taking her paying guest.” “Has she got one?” “Hadn’t you heard?” cried everybody except my wife and Mary Ambrey. “He is a man called Captain Patch--quite young--and he is coming next week. Nancy Fazackerly told us all about it after church on Sunday.” “She is coming up here to-morrow, so we shall hear about it,” said Claire. “I shall go to the concert,” I said, decidedly, “if it’s only for the sake of seeing Mrs. Harter and Captain Patch.” It occurs to me now, as I write, that perhaps that was the first time we heard their names thus coupled together--Mrs. Harter and Captain Patch. _Chapter Two_ Mrs. Fazackerly, whom we all call Nancy, lived with a very old father at Loman Cottage, just on the outskirts of Cross Loman. No one, in speaking of her behind her back to anybody unaware of her history, is ever strong-minded enough to refrain from adding, “Her husband threw plates at her head.” The first time that this was said to Bill Patch, I remember, he inquired with interest if the late Mr. Fazackerly had been a juggler. It was explained to him then that the late Mr. Fazackerly had only been of a violent temper.