she toasted she brooded. The sign of her brooding was the clicking of her false teeth as she sucked her cheeks in and out. It was simply an iniquity, she reflected, that Mary had forgotten to bring home the cheese. That girl was getting more careless than ever and as undependable in such important matters as a half-witted ninny. What was tea to a woman without cheese? Fresh Dunlop cheese! The thought of it made her long upper lip twitch, sent a little river of saliva drooling from the corner of her mouth.

As she ruminated, she kept darting quick recriminative glances from under her bent brows at her granddaughter, Mary, who sat in the opposite corner in the horsehair armchair, hallowed to her father's use, and by that token a forbidden seat.

Mary, however, was not thinking of cheese, nor of the chair, nor of the crimes she committed by forgetting the one and reclining in the other. Her soft brown eyes gazed out of the window and were focused upon the far-off distance as if they saw something there, some scene which shaped itself enchantingly under her shining glance.

Occasionally her sensitive mouth would shape itself to smile, then she would shake her head faintly, unconsciously, activating thus her pendant ringlets and setting little lustrous waves of light rippling across her hair. Her small hands, of which the skin wore the smooth soft texture of petals of magnolia, lay palm upwards in her lap, passive symbols of her contemplation. She sat as straight as a wand and she was beautiful with the dark serene beauty of a deep tranquil pool where waving wands might grow. Upon her was the unbroken bloom

of youth, yet, although she was only seventeen years of age, there rested about her pale face and slender unformed figure a quality of repose and quiet fortitude.