MY DEAR MOTHER,--Such a long time since I saw you. Don't you think you could manage a visit to Clare next week? Come for at least a month. It will do you all the good in the world and I should so much enjoy seeing you. You will find my mother-in-law very sympathetic. I had thought of suggesting that you should bring Agnes and Edna with you, but I think that perhaps for the first time you'd rather be alone. The best train leaves Paddington at eleven-twenty. Book to Cherrington Lanes and change at Exeter. On second thoughts I'll meet you at Exeter on Wednesday next. So don't make any excuses. Your loving daughter, DOROTHY. The prospect of her mother's visit was paradoxically a solace for Dorothy's disappointed maternity. The relation between them was turned upside down, and her mother became a little girl who must be looked after and kept from behaving badly, and who when she behaved well would be petted and spoiled. Heaven knows what domestic convulsions and spiritual agitations braced Mrs. Caffyn to telegraph presently: Am bringing three brats will they be enough. For a moment Dorothy thought that she was coming with Vincent, Gladys, and Marjorie, so invariably did she picture her family as all of the same age as when seven years ago she first left Lonsdale Road to go to the stage. A little consideration led her to suppose that _hats_ not _brats_ were intended, and she telegraphed back: You will want a nice shady hat for the garden. Dorothy went to meet Mrs. Caffyn at Exeter in order that the three hours in the slow train between there and Cherrington Lanes might give her an opportunity of recovering herself from that agitation which had made her telegram so ambiguous. It was impossible to avoid a certain amount of pomp at the station, because the station-master, on hearing that her ladyship was expecting her ladyship's mother, led the way to the platform where the express would arrive and unrolled before her a red carpet of good intentions. "Stand aside there," he said, severely, to a boy with a basket of newspapers. "First stop Plymouth," shouted the porters when the express came thundering in. "Stand aside," thundered the station-master, more loudly; perhaps he was addressing the train this time. Mrs. Caffyn looked out of a second-class compartment and popped in again like some shy burrowing animal that fears the great world. "What name, my lady, would be on the luggage?" asked the station-master when, notwithstanding her emersion from a second-class compartment, he had seen Mrs. Caffyn embraced by her ladyship. "Caffyn! Caffyn!" he bellowed. "Stand aside there, will you? Both vans are being dealt with, my lady," he informed her.