Wearily she tumbled her happy self out of bed feeling as her feet touched the floor the thrill of the coming day send a small current of strength through her nerves. If only she could preserve it. But everything nowadays came headlong and smiling, everything and everybody. No enemies, no difficulties. With every hour glad tidings calling. Calling from yesterday. Crowding to-day so closely that much must be missed, joy scamped and missed and waiting and pouring over into to-morrow that would bring yet more things. Why me? What have I done? Why is it that something seems to be looking after me? One can’t change one’s nature, which is one’s fate. Yet there is a sense of guilt in finding everything so easy. Perhaps I shall have an awful old age? No, from forty to sixty is the best of life. I shall go on getting happier and happier. Because it takes almost nothing to make me as happy as I can bear. But there is this terrible tiredness. Densley may be right. But one can’t marry just to escape fatigue. “Have you noticed, dear girl, that we have spent a whole evening together without argument?” “I never argue, bless you.” “You give me your blessing?” “What need have you?” “My dear girl.” “I’m neither dear nor in the least girlish.” “You’re a girl, my dear, unspoiled by worldly women, the dearest I know—with a man’s mind.” “It’s your fashionable patients, parasites, helpless parasites, I’m not blaming them, who make you think women are all cats.” “My dear golden girl, all grace and charm if only she chose, when do I see you again?” The milk boiled over and Miss Holland laughed from her bed. Again it had made a frightful mess on the oil-stove. Nearly every day Miss Holland had somehow to make that mess disappear. Yet she always laughed. Was now gaily getting up to the accompaniment of her usual jests on the catastrophe. It seemed enough for her that she lived in a glow of another life. For that she seemed willing to pay any price in unseen labour. “Did you speak to your friend about writing to the musician?” “No.” “Indeed?” What a strange, sharp note.... “Not last night. I shall see him to-day probably, or to-morrow.” Miriam could feel wrath coming through the curtain. Miss Holland was speechless, her large frame, moving now impatiently about, a boiling wrath. Evidently she had undertaken; would now have to explain to these cherished friends. But what a turmoil! How easy to find words for them and carry them along a little. Was the whole world to be stopped for their letter? She was glad she had spoken with serene indifference. Evidently her evening, the shape of her evening entertaining friends, was nothing. Her usefulness, to these wonderful acquaintances, all she was worth. It was careless, of course, to have forgotten. But she was glad now that she had forgotten. Glad to see for how little Miss Holland could adopt a tone of frigid annoyance. Damn, she thought, I’ve undertaken it. I’ll do it in my own time.