"That's a short visit this time, sir," said Hamilton. "But then London people move about more quickly than what we do." "I don't want to go," said Roger, anxious to make it clear that not restlessness but sheer necessity drove him back to London. "I'd much rather stay on here, but I have to get back to work." Hamilton became a little more cordial. "Well, goodbye, sir," he said, "We'll hope to see you down again soon," and Roger felt childishly elated at having wiped out the bad impression made by his first comment. "He crushed me utterly, Aunt Sarah," he said as soon as they were out of ear-shot. Mrs. Greene laughed. "My dear Roger, he's always like that. It's only his gloomy way of speaking, but I think he likes you; he often asks after you." "I like him," said Roger, "but he alarms me." "He won't when you know him better; he's really the mildest creature on the place. Now we must hurry back; I want you to have a cup of tea before you go." "You'll come to us on Thursday, then?" asked Roger, as the car drove up to take him to the station. "Yes, I'd like to do that, but I'll come back here on Saturday after Edith's party, and you and Mary will come soon for a long visit, won't you?" "We'd like to," answered Roger soberly. "It would be good for Mary to be in the country just now, and I'd like to be with you." "I know that, my dear boy--" Sarah Greene lifted her face to be kissed--"And I've had a delightful twenty-four hours with you." She came to the door with him and stood at the top of the steps as he got into the car, one hand resting lightly on the stone balustrade. At the turn of the drive, Roger looked back. The light was failing, and rooks were flying over the chimneys to reach home before dusk fell. Sarah Greene had come down the steps and was standing, looking up at them with her head thrown back as they flew over her roof. She stood quite motionless and absorbed, and did not notice when the car turned the corner and was lost to sight. MRS. RODNEY GREENE MRS. RODNEY GREENE I The birth, growth and development of Edith Beckett was in the nature of a prolonged prelude to the life of Edith Greene. She was brought up with but one ideal: to be a good wife and mother, and to set about being the first, at least, at as early an age as possible. This concentration on a single aim amply repaid itself. When Edith married in 1900 she was equipped with a complete knowledge of the usual faults of the young married man, of the dangerous tendencies which must be nipped in the bud by his loving and protective wife, and of the special points which she must remember to keep always in mind when building up out of the faulty material to hand a perfect specimen of the genus "husband."