They were in the Flippin sitting-room. Madge was in a winged chair with a freshly-washed gray linen cover. The chair had belonged to Mrs. Flippin's father, and for fifty years had held the place by the east window in summer and by the fireplace in winter. Oscar had wanted to bring things from Hamilton Hill to make Madge comfortable. But she had refused to spoil the simplicity of the quiet old house. "Everything that is here belongs here, Oscar," she had told him, "and I like it." She wore a mauve negligee that was sheer and soft and flowing, and her burnt-gold hair was braided and wound around her head in a picturesque and becoming coiffure. As she turned the pages of the little book the Major noticed her hands. They were white and slender, and she wore only one ring--a long amethyst set in silver. "Do you play?" he asked abruptly. "Yes. Why?" "Your hands show it." She smiled at him. "I am afraid that my hands don't quite tell the truth." She held them up so that the light of the lamp shone through them. "They are really a musician's hands, aren't they? And I am only a dabbler in that as in everything else." "You can't expect me to believe that." "But I am. I have intelligence. But I'm a 'dunce with wits.' I know what I ought to do but I don't do it. I think that I have brains enough to write, I am sure I have imagination enough to paint, I have strength enough when I am well to"--she laughed,--"scrub floors. But I don't write or play or paint--or scrub floors--I don't believe that there is one thing in the world that I can do as well as Mary Flippin makes biscuits." Her eyes seemed to challenge him to deny her assertion. He settled himself lazily in his chair, and asked about the book. "Tell me why you like Dickens, when nobody reads him in these days except ourselves." "I like him because in my next incarnation I want to live in the kind of world he writes about." He was much interested. "You do?"