"We'd better begin measuring the floor," interposed Miss Ethel uneasily, anxious to cut short this unusual loquacity on the part of Mrs. Bradford, which she knew to be caused by the general upset of looking forward to an entire change of place and routine. "Don't you think the old dining-room carpet will do very well here?" She opened the room door suddenly to discover Miss Panton just outside suppressing her emotion with a handkerchief pressed to her lips. Now she was obliged to let it finally escape in a sort of whoop. "Oh! Excuse me. I can't help it! It's the thought of you here," she said excitedly. "I know silence is golden, but there are tibes---- And to see Miss Ethel going round on her hands and dees with a tape beasure as if it was only an ordinary spring cleaning----" Never had the catarrh been so marked and so marked in its effects on her m's and n's. "Nonsense! We shall be quite comfortable here and much less work to do. Thousands of richer people than ourselves are having to move into smaller houses," said Miss Ethel; but she was touched all the same. "I'm not sure my chair will stand in that corner," said Mrs. Bradford, going back to her great preoccupation. "I must measure it. I do wish I had it here." "I can easily run and get the measurements," said Laura. "You're sure it won't upset you," said Miss Panton. "You know you ought to take care." "Of course not," said Laura. "I'm nearly all right again." But she stood facing the strong light which fell through the uncurtained window, and her face looked very pale beneath the tan; it had the queer bleached appearance which is observable in such complexions even while the healthy brown and red still remain. There were dark marks underneath her eyes, too, which accentuated the faint lines near the mouth. Miss Ethel, glancing across at her was struck for the first time by the fact that Laura was not a young girl any more, though the effect of girlishness produced by her figure and the poise of her head still remained. Then she went away to measure the chair, while Miss Ethel wrote some figures in a little book and remarked that she would now go up to the front bedroom. "Then I'll just stay where I am," said Mrs. Bradford. "There is nothing for two to do, is there? And you know my legs, of course----" She did not trouble to be more explicit, because her unusual garrulity was dying down now Miss Panton and Laura had gone, and she knew Ethel would be reasonable enough to understand that the legs of a married lady could not be expected to go up and down stairs as easily as those of a spinster.