“How are you going back?” Harriet asked, covering in the range, and slipping a plate over the lidless bowl. “I meant to have cleared out long before this. I hope Stubbs hasn’t been worrying Cyril.” The name came out naturally enough, but Dandy started a little. The use of it by Harriet seemed to put her old friend Wiggie in a new light. “Father is coming for me,” she replied. “He had to go to Manchester to-day, but he said he’d run over as soon as he got back. He wanted to see Mr. Lancaster. You’ll wait and come with us, won’t you? He should be here any time now, and I can’t stop alone, with my hostess locked away upstairs.” “Right you are!” Harriet lifted the tray with reverent care. “Put out that one-eyed gas, will you, and light the candle? There’s a cockroach crawling up you--don’t know if you’re keen on ’em! You’d better go on in front and yell out if there are any booby-traps. I nearly broke my shin over a clothes-horse, and we can’t afford to lose the soup.” But in the hall she stopped, even as her hand was raised to knock, for Dandy, with flushed cheeks, had stepped back into the firelight from the drawing-room, bringing to the other how Lanty had paused--from her corner she had seen him--paused, weary as he was, to look at the same picture. There had been in his face something of which he had not known, but which even Harriet, unobservant and callous, had not failed to read. It was as if, in that instant, he had seen at last the “silly home” of his desire. She drew back, holding out the tray. “_You_ take it in, will you? I’m not fit to be seen, after grubbing about in that region of the lost.” Dandy started, and shook her head violently. “Nonsense! It’s _your_ cooking. Go in and collect your own credit. If it comes to that, _I’m_ not fit to be seen, either!” “Don’t fish!” Harriet snarled. “Buck up, I tell you! The stuff’s freezing. I’m not going in, anyway, so if you won’t take it I may as well sling it through the window.” “But----” Dandy advanced with reluctance. “I don’t like to! It’s your place. You know him so much better than I.” “That’s just it. He doesn’t want the folks he knows. They know too much. I’d probably be giving him my opinion before he asked it. You walk in as if you were used to it, and he’ll probably think you’re only Our Agnes.” Dandy took the tray slowly, still doubtful. “Git!” said Harriet, and knocked. Without waiting for an answer, she opened the door and pushed the girl in, closing it again instantly. Not content with that, she went out into the porch, and shut the inner door behind her. She would not even be within reach of their voices. The damp cold swept in from the west as she stood in the dark, biting her lip. The standard of action is mercifully adjusted to each of us, and perhaps Harriet’s funny, homely, big-little sacrifice formed a fine enough leaf in the laurels of Love.