"They are like the wasps," said Bobby; "they'll hang about so long as the grub's there. I'll go out and clear them off." He left the room by the window. Mr Graynor looked after him, and meeting Prudence's eye, exchanged a smile with her. "The assurance of youth!" he remarked. "You and I, we've had enough of them, Prue." He regarded her again more attentively. "That blue dress is very becoming to you, my dear." Prudence flushed warmly. His appreciation recalled to her mind the light of admiration in the curate's eyes, his quick hungry swoop towards her, the eager furtiveness of his kiss--the first time that a man's lips had touched hers, other than the members of her family. But he belonged to the family in a sense--a wretched little hanger-on, catching at the overflow from the Graynor pockets. "If it is becoming, I don't believe you like it very well," she said. "It makes you look old--perhaps that's why," he answered, and thought with regret of the little girl who had given place to this tall and gracious young woman. CHAPTER FOURTEEN. Matilda's departure from the family circle made strangely little difference. She had made no particular place for herself in the home which she had occupied for thirty years, had established no claim on any member of her family. If anyone missed her, it was Prudence: Matilda had been the most amiable of her elder sisters; but she had never been in any sense of the word a companion. The first Mrs Graynor's family, with the exception of the younger son, were none of them companionable; they were self-contained and reserved, and lacking in those qualities of individuality and initiative which make for the breaking away from tradition and the following a line of one's own. Matilda was naturally submissive. She had submitted uncomplainingly to Agatha's rule all her life; and she left one submission for another, and, in accordance with the dictates of the marriage service, which Prudence considered degrading and Matilda thought beautiful, became subject willingly to the dominating and not particularly chivalrous authority of her husband. Had Mr Jones succeeded in winning the sister whom he had coveted, he would have found this comfortable arrangement of relationship reversed. There was no aptitude for submission in Prudence. On one point after Matilda's marriage Prudence was firm: she refused to be chaperoned on her walks by one of the remaining sisters. Matilda's presence she had suffered as a protection against the curate's advances; since these advances were no longer to be dreaded, she refused to be shadowed in future, and in order to escape from the annoyance took to cycling, a form of exercise which none of the elder Miss Greynors would attempt.