I am not sure that Ethelbertha is going to like Mrs. St. Leonard; and I don’t think Mrs. St. Leonard will much like Ethelbertha. I have gathered that Mrs. St. Leonard doesn’t like anybody much—except, of course, when it is her duty. She does not seem to have the time. Man is born to trouble, and it is not bad philosophy to get oneself accustomed to the feeling. But Mrs. St. Leonard has given herself up to the pursuit of trouble to the exclusion of all other interests in life. She appears to regard it as the only calling worthy a Christian woman. I found her alone one afternoon. Her manner was preoccupied; I asked if I could be of any assistance. “No,” she answered, “I am merely trying to think what it can be that has been worrying me all the morning. It has clean gone out of my head.” She remembered it a little later with a glad sigh. St. Leonard himself, Ethelbertha thinks charming. We are to go again on Sunday for her to see the children. Three or four people we met I fancy we shall be able to fit in with. We left at half-past six, and took Bute back with us to supper. CHAPTER X “SHE’S a good woman,” said Robina. “Who’s a good woman?” I asked. “He’s trying, I expect; although he is an old dear: to live with, I mean,” continued Robina, addressing apparently the rising moon. “And then there are all those children.” “You are thinking of Mrs. St. Leonard,” I suggested. “There seems no way of making her happy,” explained Robina. “On Thursday I went round early in the morning to help Janie pack the baskets for the picnic. It was her own idea, the picnic.” “Speaking of picnics,” I said. “You might have thought,” went on Robina, “that she was dressing for her own funeral. She said she knew she was going to catch her death of cold, sitting on the wet grass. Something told her. I reminded her it hadn’t rained for three weeks, and that everything was as dry as a bone, but she said that made no difference to grass. There is always a moisture in grass, and that cushions and all that only helped to draw it out. Not that it mattered. The end had to come, and so long as the others were happy—you know her style. Nobody ever thought of her. She was to be dragged here, dragged there. She talked about herself as if she were some sacred image. It got upon my nerves at last, so that I persuaded Janie to let me offer to stop at home with her. I wasn’t too keen about going myself; not by that time.” “When our desires leave us, says Rochefoucauld,” I remarked, “we pride ourselves upon our virtue in having overcome them.” “Well, it was her fault, anyhow,” retorted Robina; “and I didn’t make a virtue of it. I told her I’d just as soon not go, and that I felt sure the others would be all right without her, so that there was no need for her to be dragged anywhere. And then she burst into tears.”