They were sitting as usual, one on either side of the big, old-fashioned fireplace, and Miss Jane’s cap had got tilted a little to one side when she went to the door to speak to Eliza Spencer, whose baby had the whooping-cough. Miss Mary’s looked to be preparing itself to follow suit. They both wore little white shawls folded crosswise on their breasts and pinned with large Cairngorm brooches, which looked as if they might have come out of the Ark; and black silk mittens over their pretty little hands. In the morning the shawls were grey or black, and the mittens of fine wool, but in the evening, all through the winter, they sat on each side of the fireplace, dressed precisely the same, with the same species of knitting in their fingers, reminding one of two china ornaments. Almost ever since Jack could remember it had been the same, and he took in each little detail now with a new tenderness, from the quaint little elastic-side boots just showing on each footstool, to the softly waving white hair growing perceptibly thinner each year and the dainty caps that had such a habit of getting awry. Until that evening he felt he had never quite known how dear his two second mothers had become to him. He sat now over by the table with his arms on a newspaper he was supposed to be reading. He felt as if he could control his voice better if he did not come too near. For a little while they talked in their kind, sympathetic way of Eliza Spencer and her sick child, and then there was a breathing silence. All felt that something unusual was in the air. At last Miss Jane looked up from her knitting, and saw that Jack was not reading at all, but sitting with his eyes upon their faces, and a deeply troubled expression on his own. “Is there anything wrong, dear?” she asked. He cleared his throat, but the rising lump would not go, and he waited several moments before he answered. A pained look came into each little, wrinkled face. They knew then that something fresh was to come upon them. “I’m afraid you’ll both be very upset,” he said at last, and again he had to pause. “Go on, dear,” said Aunt Jane encouragingly, seeing what ah effort it was to him. “I am going away,” he blurted out, almost like a schoolboy. “I am going to South America to earn my own living,” and then he buried his face on his arms, for he could not bear to see the distress come into their eyes. “Going away!” He heard Miss Jane repeat it as if she could not believe her own ears; and then: “South America—going away—to South America—” Each piece of knitting went down into each lap, and two wrinkled faces looked at each other as if they could not understand, and then turned slowly to the man’s bowed head—the fair head that it seemed only yesterday had nestled to their hearts in babyhood. “He can’t mean it,” breathed little Miss Mary. “Indeed, sister, he can’t mean it—” There was a long silence, and then with tears coursing silently down her cheeks Miss Jane said very quietly: