"Yes, I can ask the girl if you like," answered Mrs. Bransby, not quite as warmly as Theodore thought she ought to have answered such a suggestion from him; "but it will be rather stupid for her, I'm afraid. At the Hadlows' there is a young girl near her own age; but here, unless she likes to play with the children, I don't see how we are to amuse her." "I did not contemplate Miss Cheffington's playing with the children. I meant that you should invite her to a dinner-party, or something of that sort." "Invite May Cheffington to a dinner-party!" repeated Mrs. Bransby, opening her soft, brown eyes in astonishment. "My father spoke of giving a dinner before I go back to the Temple, and he said he thought he should be well enough to see his friends by the end of next week." "Yes. He talked of inviting the Pipers, and the Hadlows, and perhaps Mr. Bragg." "Could you not include Miss Cheffington? Perhaps if you allowed me to see your list I might help to arrange it." "Oh, I suppose one _could_; but wouldn't it seem a very strange thing to do?" A little colour came into Theodore's pale fair face, and his chin grew visibly more rigid above his cravat, as he answered, "I don't know. But the social _convenances_ are not to be measured by Oldchester's provincial ideas as to their strangeness. And--pardon me--I don't think you quite understand Miss Cheffington's position." And then he entered on an explanation of the "position," much as he had explained it to Owen Rivers; with only such suppressions and variations (chiefly regarding the private history of Augustus Cheffington) as he thought the difference between his hearers demanded. "Well, I'm sure if your father has no objection, I have none," said Mrs. Bransby at length. And so Theodore got his own way. It was a matter of course that he should get his own way so far as his step-mother was concerned. Mrs. Bransby had, indeed, successfully resisted him on many occasions; but always through the medium of her husband. If Theodore attacked her face to face, she never had the courage to oppose him. Not that in the present case she very much wished to oppose him. Nor, in truth, had their wills ever clashed seriously. But the secret consciousness of her weakness and timidity was mortifying: for Mrs. Bransby, although too gentle to fight, was not too gentle to wish she could fight. And after Theodore had left the room, she sat for some time imagining to herself various neat and pointed speeches which would doubtless have brought down her stepson's sententious, supercilious tone, if she had only had the presence of mind to utter them. CHAPTER VI.