only representative of the vanishing generation. Her daughters--ay! and perhaps her sons as well (though boys are not credited with so much tender divination)--knew the meaning of the little droop at the side of their mother's smiling lips. They detected the insincerity of her kindly laugh. Shortly after leaving Exeter, Christian's station was reached. This was an old-fashioned seaport town, whose good fortune it was to lie too far west for a London watering-place, and too far east for Plymouth or Bristol. Sidney Carew was on the platform--a sturdy, typical Englishman, with a certain sure slowness of movement handed down to him by seafaring ancestors. The two friends had not met for many years, but with men absence has little effect upon affection. During the space of many years they may never meet and seldom write, but at the end that gulf of time is bridged over by a simple “Halloa, old fellow!” and a warm grip. Slowly, piece by piece, the history of the past years comes out. Both are probably changed in thought and nature, but the old individuality remains, the old bond of friendship survives. “Well, Sidney?” “How are you?” Simultaneously--and that was all. The changes were there in both, and noted by both, but not commented upon. “Molly is outside with the dog-cart,” said Sidney; “is your luggage forward?” “Yes, that is it being pitched out now.” It was with womanly foresight that Miss Molly Carew had elected to wait outside with the dog-cart while her brother met Christian on the platform. She feared a little natural embarrassment at meeting the old playfellow of the family, and concluded that the first moments would be more easily tided over here than at the train. Her fears were, as it turned out, unnecessary, but she did not know what Christian might be like after the lapse of years. Of herself she was sure enough, being one of those happy people who have no self-consciousness whatever. On seeing her, Christian came forward at once, raising his hat and shaking hands as if they had parted the day before. She saw at once that it was all right. This was Christian Vellacott as she had remembered him. She looked down at him as he stood with one hand resting on the splashboard, and he, looking up to her, smiled in return. “Christian,” she said, “do you know I should scarcely have recognised you. You are so big, and--and you look positively ghastly!” She finished her remark with a little laugh which took away from the spoken meaning of it. “Ghastly?” he replied. “Thanks: I do not feel like it--only hungry. Hungry, and desperately glad to see a face that does not look overworked.” “Meaning me.” “Meaning you.” She gave a little sarcastic nod, and pursed up a pair of very red lips. “Nevertheless I am the only person in the house who does any work at all. Hilda, for instance--” At this moment Sidney came up and interrupted them.