Up here, in this world of solid furniture, it seemed that England was indeed a country to be proud of! Mrs. Trenchard would have made no mean Britannia, seated in one of the Stores’ arm-chairs with a Stores’ curtain-rod for her trident! Upon this January afternoon she found her way to the furniture department more swiftly than was usual with her. The Stores seemed remote from her to-day. As she passed the hams, the chickens, the medicines and powders, the petticoats and ribbons and gloves, the books and the stationery, the cut-glass and the ironware, the fancy pots, the brass, the Chinese lanterns, the toys, the pianos and the gramophones, the carpets and the silver, the clocks and the pictures, she could only be dimly aware that to-day these things were not for her, that all the treasures of the earth might be laid at her feet and she would not care for them, that all the young men and young women in England might bow and smile before her and she would have no interest nor pleasure in them. She reached the furniture department. She sank down in the red-leather arm-chair. She said, with a little sigh: “She has never forgotten before!” This was, considering her surroundings and the moment of its expression, the most poignant utterance of her life. Millie’s chief emotion, until this moment, had been one of intense boredom. The Stores seemed to her, after Paris, an impossible anachronism; she could not understand why it was not instantly burnt up and destroyed, and all its solemn absurdities cast, in dirt and ashes, to the winds. She followed her mother with irritation, and glances of cynical contempt were flung by her upon the innocent ladies who were buying and chatting and laughing together. Then she remembered that her mother was in trouble, and she was bowed down with self-accusation for a hard heartless girl who thought of no one but herself. Her moods always thus followed swiftly one upon another. When, in the furniture department, she heard that forlorn exclamation she wanted to take her mother’s hand, but was shy and embarrassed. “I expect Katie _had_ to go with Philip.... Something she _had_ to do, and perhaps it only kept her a moment or two and she got back just after we’d left. We didn’t wait long enough for her. She’s been waiting there, I expect, all this time for us.” Mrs. Trenchard’s cheek flushed and her eyes brightened. “Why, Millie, that’s most likely! We’ll go back at once ... that’s most likely.... We’ll go back at once.” “This is a very cheap article,” said the young man, “or if Madame would prefer a chair with—” “No, no,” said Mrs. Trenchard quite impatiently. “Not to-day. Not to-day, thank you.” “There are the hot-water bottles,” said Millie. “Oh, of course.... I want some hot-water bottles. Ours leak ... three of them....” “In the rubber department, Madam, first to the right, second to the left....” But Mrs. Trenchard hurried through the hot-water bottles in a manner utterly foreign to her.