"Well, that seems easily done nowadays," said Miss Ethel, listening still as she spoke. "Perhaps women don't realize that though they can easily get rid of an unsatisfactory husband, it will be just as easy for a satisfactory husband to get rid of them." But Mrs. Bradford did not care for abstract questions. "I expect the Marchioness will have the custody of the children," she said. So Miss Ethel took up the other half of the paper to try and distract her mind from the noises over the hedge. But every head-line seemed to dart at her sore consciousness as if it were a snake's head with a sting in it. Murder. Unrest. Strikes. Dissatisfactions. Change. The whole outlook was indescribably comfortless and depressing to her. She felt something akin to the vague, apprehensive misery--beyond reason or common sense--which people feel during the rumble of a distant earthquake. "I hate reading the papers," she said, flinging the sheet down. "You shouldn't read the parts that worry you. I don't," said Mrs. Bradford. "But you always were one to work yourself up about things. I remember once how you fretted over some little newsboys with no stockings on, when we went into Flodmouth as children to see the pantomime. You worried yourself and everybody else to death. But they were used to it, as dear father said, and it did them no harm. You are of the worrying sort, Ethel, and you should try to hold yourself in." "Poor world if nobody worried," said Miss Ethel; then she rose abruptly and carried out the tea-tray. Soon she was back again with a duster in her hand, beginning to dust the large bookshelf, which had been overlooked for a day or two. As her duster passed over the red-leather backs of the old bound volumes of _Punch_ she saw with a wistful inner eye--as if she looked back to a Promised Land on which the gate was shut for ever--that world of swells and belles, of croquet and sunshine, of benevolence to the "poor" and fingers touching forelocks, black being black and white white. Then Mrs. Bradford spoke again. "Why not leave that dusting, Ethel? You have been at it all day." "Somebody must," said Miss Ethel, going on dusting. "Well, I only wish I could do more," said Mrs. Bradford, comfortably turning her page with a rustling crackle. "But my legs have given way ever since I was married. I don't know why, I'm sure; but marriage does seem to affect the constitution in queer ways." Miss Ethel felt--as she was intended to feel--that it was not within her power to comprehend the mysteries of the conjugal state; so acquiescing from long habit in her sister's torpidity, she went on with her dusting.