Mrs. Arnold said she and Mr. Arnold had strolled out there on the last bank holiday. They had gone through the house, because they expected to build and wanted “ideas.” The rooms were large now, lofty ceilinged; and the walls were beautiful. She had been especially impressed with the big room added on the west side. “It is different from the others which are done in a misty gray with the woodwork finished in old ivory. They are elegant and sober. But this one is not sober, very bright.” “Probably the ball room,” Mrs. Flitch suggested. Mrs. Arnold glanced up from the bandage, she was rolling. “No,” she said, “I am sure it is not a ball room, because it opens into the one Mrs. Cutter has reserved for herself, they told me. The decorations--are unusual. I was surprised.” This was as far as she got. She had a neat little mind and only gossiped like a perfect lady, which is a very fine art. Still, she thought it interesting, if not sensational in a pleasant way, that this room had a decoration of Mother Goose pictures around the top of it--all the literature of infancy illustrated there, in fact, from this wandering goose mounting a highly ornamental staircase to the lurid cow with exalted tail in the act of jumping over the moon. And she was glad Mrs. Cutter had “this” to look forward to after so many years. A woman without children was to be pitied. Then Helen Cutter came home late in January, quite unobtrusively and alone. No maid, no wig-tailed man servant, no fancy dog. Evidently Mr. Cutter was still in New York. But rich people continually did queer things that other people could not afford to do. From that point of view everything looked all right. Their wives went about the world alone, and their husbands frequently did business in some other part of the world. No one in Shannon suspected that the relations between Helen and her husband were even strained. They merely heard that she had “come down” to superintend the furnishing of her new house, that she had engaged an interior decorator for this purpose, that a great many fine things had been shipped in, and that she was having some of the best pieces of her golden oak done over for her own room. These pieces were painted gray and delicately ornamented with tiny wreaths of flowers. As it turned out, however, most of this old stuff was used to furnish that large, bright and sprightly room with the Mother Goose wall paper. As usual, Helen saw little of her neighbors. The weather was bad; her house was topsy-turvy; she was very busy; and she had an established reputation for reserve. Still, they met her here and there on the street, in the shops, in passing. And once shortly after her return she had paid a brief visit to the Red Cross rooms to deliver her quota of sweaters. She would have remained longer: she craved the comradeship of these women whom she had known all her life, but the consciousness of her humiliation, yet unknown to them, affected her courage.