"Dear Mrs. Anstey, it is ages since we met!" Her piercing tones, likened by the Tobies to those of a macaw, strove in vain for suavity. "So good of you to come to this affair--such a distance for you, too!" "Oh, I always try to come when I am at home," said Mrs. Anstey gently. "I like to support Mr. Madgwick's parish, though I'm afraid I don't spend a great deal of money! Really the flowers and the home-made cakes are the only things that tempt me." "And surely you have plenty of flowers at home!" Lady Martin glanced with a disparaging little laugh at the stall before her. "I don't know where these came from, but they look sadly wilted already." "I'm afraid I can't agree with you there," said Mrs. Anstey, with a little smile. "I think the flowers are charming, especially those sent by Mrs. Rose's kindness from Greenriver." She indicated Toni with a friendly little gesture, and Lady Martin condescended, unwillingly, to acknowledge the girl's greeting. To tell the truth, Lady Martin had no desire to better her acquaintance with Toni. She had long ago intended the owner of Greenriver for her son-in-law; and to find this little nobody, with her provincial ways and her foreign-looking eyes, acting as _chatelaine_ of the beautiful old house in her daughter's place had an irritating effect. To make matters worse, several people had known of her matrimonial designs; and since the disappointment of one's friends is frequently a source of mirth, she had been annoyed by several tactless allusions, made presumably in jest, to her daughter's disappointment. So it was that she disliked Rose's wife with the hearty aversion of a spiteful and jealous woman; and the fact that she herself came of the people made her specially quick to suspect _bourgeois_ blood in others. She took a delight, now, in snubbing Toni; and presently made a point of asking after her cousin Miss Mibbs. "She's very well, thank you," replied Toni, wondering a little at this unusual condescension. "But her name isn't Mibbs, it's Gibbs." "Really?" Lady Martin drawled the word out insolently, as though to indicate that the name of the young woman in question did not interest her. "She is not here to-day, I suppose?" "No," said Toni, absent-mindedly, "she was not able to get off to-day." "Get off?" Lady Martin pounced on the strange form of the admission. "She is ... er ... full of social engagements?" Afterwards Toni thought it was the scent of the flowers which had made her feel hazy just then. Although she had an intuition that her interlocutor meant to be inquisitive, she had not the sense to turn the subject with a vague assent; and after a second's hesitation replied rather foolishly that her cousin's engagements were not in society. "Indeed? But it is holiday time--surely Miss Gibbs is not _teaching_ now?"