Jill had been summoned to find her Aunt, rigid, holding between finger and thumb the tail of the moral offender: not unlike a small rodent herself, with her sharp nose and pointed chin framed in a grey check duster. Her brown fringe was frankly awry, her grey eyes had steely points. "Look at _that_!--I've a great mind to take it straight to your Mother. I wonder you haven't all had typhoid! That's what comes of a dirty house!"--she scoffed--"she really _ought_ to know." "Oh, Aunt Elizabeth, _don't_!" cried Jill. "Mother's afraid of mice." "Hm..." Miss Uniacke snorted at this--"and calls herself a militant suffragette! I'm really ashamed for the servants to see it. Take it away and bury it--and I only hope it will be a lesson!" Inwardly she was rejoicing. Jill, obediently, received the corpse and departed toward the garden. On the way she met Roddy--who promptly proposed to skin it!--but the gruesome project was abandoned and a small grave dug instead, with an ornamental tombstone. As soon as the house was thoroughly cleaned the reformer turned her attention to the domestic education of her niece. For Mrs. Uniacke was up, on a long chair in her room, and required but little nursing now. Every morning after breakfast Aunt Elizabeth donned a hat of plaited straw, tied with a ribbon under her pointed chin, not unlike the kind worn by a careful horse during a heat wave--so Jill thought--and only needing two holes and a pair of ears! She and Jill would adjourn to the garden, where a pantry table and chairs were arranged on the swept path under a sycamore. Here they mended the long-neglected household linen and the older woman preached; taking for her text the decadence of the present age, as compared to that of her early youth. "In _my_ young days"--she would start with a sniff--"we took a pride in our homes. We hadn't time for discontent and to dabble in men's affairs. Look at this darn..." she held it out. "I'd like to see a _man_ do that!" Contempt was in her shrill voice. She went on, more gently: "I remember we used once a week to meet at my Mother's house--your Grandmamma, Jill, my dear, but you don't remember her--my two cousins and my sister and a girl friend, and have a Sewing Bee. You think it sounds dull?--I assure you it wasn't! We took it in turns to read aloud--Wilkie Collins was coming out in a weekly journal--most exciting! We fixed the day on which it appeared, and no one was allowed to peep inside. Edward used to take it in. He was always so full of fun--and one afternoon he pretended it hadn't come. We were so vexed and then my cousin Jean found it pushed carefully into a stocking ready to darn! How we laughed!" She glanced up, smiling, at Jill--"You're very like your Father, my dear, his hair and eyes--and dark brows." "Am I?--I'm so glad." The girl checked a sudden sigh. "You can't think how we missed him!"--her voice was low--"it seemed, somehow ... like the end of everything."