I have referred, I hope not unkindly, to a certain laxity in this dear and harmless spinster's hold on life. Since the birth of our child this laxity had become intensified, if such a word can be used of laxity, and very rarely had she come up to see us empty-handed. From some mysterious hoard of belongings that seemed ever on the point of exhaustion and yet ever stood the strain of another gift, she had brought, now a tiny pair of knitted woollen socks, now a shawl, now a bit of silver, and even the mite's cradle was that in which Evie herself had been rocked. She found a pleasure quite paradisal in these continual givings. I think they were her spiritual boasts of how little she required for herself. "_What_ a pity!" she purred again. "But I dare say they'd take it back----" "Hallo!" I said, shaking hands. "Take what back? What's that you're saying?" "This table. I'm sure they'd let you off your bargain for ten shillings or so. The money would be so much more useful." I laughed. "Oh, money's no object," I said. This, of course, was mere mischief. The truth was that Angela Soames, like Evie, had begun to hold my ambition a good deal in dread. It had been good fun to think about in the early stages; they had enjoyed that part as much as anybody; but to take the plunge as I was taking it was--in Miss Angela's case I might almost say "impious"; certainly it was a storming of destiny that was bound to bring a crop of consequences they were sure I had not sufficiently weighed. So it had become my habit to hold their timidity over them as a joke, talking sometimes in sums that might have staggered even the Consolidation. "Oh, money's no object!" I said, laughing. "Well!" Aunt Angela retorted, "even you can't afford to throw it away till you've got it. So, Evie, I thought my round table in place of this one--send this back--and the tea-urn I promised you in the middle of the sideboard, with Mr. Pepper's candlesticks on each side of it--just here--and you could buy a quite nice pair of curtains with the pound Jeff turns up his nose at." I interrupted. "Your tea-urn? Oh, come, come! We're not going to accept that!" But she only dropped her eyes. "My wants are few," she said, "and I've more than enough for them. You young people come first. How do you know I haven't had a legacy?... And of course I shall have the table repolished, Evie, and if Jeff _will_ be stupid, you can have it in the drawing-room, in that corner by the bureau----" I was about to laugh again at the artless mixture in her of expansive unworldliness and quite astute machination when suddenly I thought better of it, and turned away. Aunt Angela was taking off her hat and giving coquettish touches to her tall, snowy hair. As that meant that she proposed to spend the evening with us, I had to postpone what I wished to say to Evie until she should have departed. II