In a well-cushioned chair by the sunny window sat a short, stout lady with very pretty pink hands and faded blue eyes, who rose up from her knitting to greet the visitor. She was the old governess who lived with Laura, and her real name was Panton, but she had always been "Nanty" in the far-off nursery days, and so she was called still by intimates of the family whose various branches she had trained to read and spell. Now she was--as she herself said--eating the bread of idleness; her two great and absorbing interests in life being Laura and knitting. She had been afflicted doubtless with adenoids in her own childhood, but at that time they were not generally considered removable. At all events, she now confused her M's and B's intermittently, as she always had done, and never troubled herself about it, being an easy-going person. She did not mind, for instance, telling anyone how Laura called to see her one day when she was living in lodgings in Flodmouth, and there and then invited her to come and keep house. But she could not tell what caused this sudden impulse, because she did not know. As a matter of fact, it was just one of those trifles which do influence human conduct by touching the emotions--and always will, let cynics say what they may. And the ridiculous thing which touched this hidden spring in Laura was a very stale, untouched, highly ornamented cake which Miss Panton cut with fingers that trembled from eagerness--so pleased and excited was she by having a visitor at last. "I rather thought I might have had a good bany callers--my papa was so well down here in the old days. But there does not seeb to be anybody left." The familiar "seeb"--the sudden picture of poor old Nanty waiting there for those callers, descendants of her papa's substantial circle, who never came--the glow of a generous girl newly engaged who wants to make everybody else happy--all this had influenced Laura to say, without waiting to think: "Come and live with me until I am married. I'd simply love to have you, Nanty. Miss Wilson is always saying I ought to have a chaperone since I ceased wandering about and went to live in my own little house at Thorhaven." So that was how Miss Panton came to be sitting in that pleasant corner of the sunny room, doing her knitting and listening while Laura talked to Miss Ethel about the nursing fund in which they were both interested. Occasionally Miss Panton would push forward mechanically a conversational counter from the little store she kept always by her. Thus when Miss Ethel spoke of the bricks that had arrived on the other side of the privet hedge, Nanty glanced up for a second to remark in her throaty little voice: "It is hard. That lovely garden of yours, Miss Ethel---- But tibe and tide wait for no ban!" Then she sighed and resumed her absorbing occupation, satisfied that she had taken her due part in the social amenities.