The oppressive thought was no new one--and she had asked stupid people to dinner, and accepted invitations to wearisome households. She had urged Mildred and Amy to join the golf and tennis clubs, though they were apathetic about golf and tennis, and she usually took them to London to buy their frocks, instead of to the local High Street. But girls less becomingly dressed had got married, and no young man had paid any attentions to Mildred or Amy. Though Mildred was but twenty-five, and Amy only twenty-three, both had already the air of girls destined for spinsterhood. Sometimes, as she regarded their premature primness, she found it impossible to suppose that proposals would ever come to them, impossible to picture either of the staid, angular figures in a man's arms. Timidly, once, when her dread of a lifetime spent in Beckenhampton had grown unbearable, she had nerved herself to suggesting a removal. "Don't you think we should find it brighter to live somewhere else?" she had pleaded. "In London we should have concerts, and pictures and things." "London?" Amy had faltered, with dismay. "Oh, no, I shouldn't like that at all." "Well, it needn't be London, then; but there are nicer towns than this. What do _you_ think, Mildred?" "I'm sure we could, none of us, be as happy as we are at home," said Mildred in a shocked voice. "It would seem dreadful to leave the home where dear father used to be with us." And the little stepmother, her hope extinguished, had found herself murmuring, "Yes, of course, there _is_ that, I know." The terms of their father's will had made the house more theirs than hers; it seemed to her that she lacked the right to persist, even if she could have felt sanguine of persistence prevailing. But what she lacked most of all, of course, was courage. She was good-natured, she was charming, she had some beautiful qualities, but she was without the force of mind to oppose anybody. She was a tender, lovable, and exasperating coward. That is to say, she would have been exasperating if there had been anyone to regret her cowardice, anyone to care much whether she was miserable or not. And then, one summer, after Mildred had influenza, the doctor recommended Harrogate, instead of the dismal village--and the possibility of Harrogate yielding husbands to the girls quickened the woman's heart. In the season there, among so many men--mightn't there be two to find Mildred and Amy congenial? It was she, not they, who pondered so carefully and paid so much for the morning, afternoon, and evening dresses in which they lagged about a fashionable hydro a fortnight later. It was she, not they, who knew a throb of hope when either of them danced twice, monosyllabically, with the same partner, and who welcomed their opportunity to play in an amateur performance, with its attraction of daily rehearsals. "I don't think we care much for acting," Amy demurred. "I think we would rather look on, like you."