"Five and twenty," mused Mrs Lisle. "I suppose it is just possible." "It is really less than that," explained the other. "You may have noticed that as it is now no good making more than five per cent., most companies pay even less. There is no incentive to do well." "One hears of even worse cases on every hand," said another of the ladies. "I am trying to interest people in a poor deformed creature whose father left her an annuity derived from ground rents in the City.... As it has been worked out I think that she owes the Incomes Adjustment Department lawyers something a year now. But private charity seems almost to have ceased altogether. Have you heard that 'Jim's' is closed?" It was true. St James's Hospital, whose unvarnished record was, "Three hundred of the very poor treated freely each day," was a thing of the past, and across its portal, where ten years before a couple of stalwart gentlemen wearing red ties had rested for a moment, while they lit their pipes, a banner with the strange device, "Curse your Charity!" now ran the legend, "Closed for want of Funds." "I wonder sometimes," mused the last speaker, "why some one doesn't do something." "But," objected another, "what is there to do? What is there?" They all agreed that there was nothing--absolutely nothing. Every one else was tacitly making the same admission; that was the fatal symptom. Miss Lisle jumped up and began to move away unceremoniously. "Where are you going, dear?" asked her mother in mild reproof. "Oh, anywhere," replied Irene restlessly. "But what for?" persisted Mrs Lisle. "Oh, anything." "That is 'nothing,' Miss Lisle," smiled the tactful lady of the party, anxious to smooth over the awkwardness of the moment. "No, it is at least something," flung back the girl brusquely; and with swinging strides she set off at a furious pace towards the open country. "Irene is a little impulsive at times," apologized her mother, sitting back with placidly folded hands. CHAPTER II THE PERIOD, AND THE COMING OF WINGS An intelligent South Sea Islander, who had been imported into this country to stimulate missionary enterprise, on his return had said that the most marked characteristic of the English of the period was what they called "snap."