THREE LOVING LADIES By THE HON. MRS. DOWDALL BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 1921 _Printed in Great Britain_ TO KATIE BURRILL THREE LOVING LADIES CHAPTER I Messrs. Burridge and Co’s pantechnicons bumped majestically along the streets of Millport early in the morning. Mud seemed to be unaccountably falling from the sky through a close filter of smoke draped high above the town; for although there was no fog, the great stucco offices on either side of the street were slimy with coffee-coloured moisture, and the people who hurried along looked cold and slippery, like panic-stricken snails compelled to leave their shelters. The same mysterious mud oozed also from below the paving stones, and would continue to ooze long after the sun had penetrated the smoke filter and made the houses and the pedestrians comparatively dry. Millport is one of the largest cities of the empire, and one of the richest. I have never heard of anyone living there for choice, or for any reason but an alleged opportunity for making money. Those who settle there are in the habit of transplanting themselves at regular intervals; removing to a house further away from the premises to which the breadwinner carries a neat bag or attaché case every weekday morning, between eight and ten. The removals mark a rise in the social scale, and are celebrated by new responsibilities, in the addition of servants, greenhouses, garages and acres of ground requiring “upkeep.” The heights of Elysium are, in the end, reached by train. Between the main railway station and the outskirts of wealth, lie nearly two miles of shops, and a professional quarter where the inner darkness of blocks and terraces shades into the dim glory of semi-detached houses. The next stage of grandeur is seen in the increase of laurel bushes and gravel paths round each semi-detached pair. When the flower beds in front, and the tennis lawns at the back, reach a certain standard of importance they flow into each other by connecting paths between the buildings, and each house then stands alone, detached, in the full radiance of encircling “grounds.”