“Yes, I am usually at home. Miss Gifford is the head and I am the hands, you see,” she smiled, casting quick, upward glances at the long, pale young man in his chair near the fire. “Miss Henderson, Miss Grey, and I live here all year round, and I do so look forward to Miss Gifford’s coming. Oh, yes, it’s a most interesting life. Do you do anything of the sort? Are you going to take up a club? Perhaps you are going into the Church?” Miss Allen asked her swift succession of questions as if in a mild desperateness. Gavan admitted that his interest was wholly in Miss Gifford. “She _is_ interesting,” Miss Allen, all comprehension, agreed. “So many people find her inspiring. Do you know Mr. Grainger, the M.P.? He comes here constantly. He is a cousin, you know. He has known her, of course, ever since she was a child. I think it’s very probable that she influences his political life--oh, quite in a right sense, I mean. He is such a conscientious man--everybody says that. And then she isn’t at all eccentric, you know, as so many fashionable women who come down here are; they do give one so much trouble when they are like that,--all sorts of fads that one has to manage to get on with. She isn’t at all faddish. And she isn’t sentimental, either. I think the sentimental ones are worst--for the people, especially, giving them all sorts of foolish ideas. And it’s not that she doesn’t _care_. She cares such a lot. That’s the secret of her not getting discouraged, you see. She never loses her spirit.” “Is it such discouraging work?” Gavan questioned from his chair. With his legs crossed, his hat and stick held on his knee, he surveyed Miss Allen and the crocuses. “Well, not to me,” she answered; “but that’s very different, for I have religious faith. Miss Gifford hasn’t that, so of course she must care a great deal to make up for it. When one hasn’t a firm faith it is far more difficult, I always think, to see any hope in it all. I think she would find it far easier if she had that. She can’t resign herself to things. She is rather hot-tempered at times,” Miss Allen added, with one of her sharp, shy glances.