stroking the nose from right to left with a movement of the back of her hand. Her face was worn, tired and pathetic; her aspect bowed and drooping, yet with an air as if she continually flogged her jaded energies onwards. She looked ten years older than her forty-two years. This was Mary's mother, but now they seemed as alien and unrelated as an old sheep and a young fawn.

A mistress from necessity of every variety of domestic situation^ Mamma, for so Mrs. Brodie was named by every member of the house, envisaged the old woman's rage and Mary's embarrassment at a glance.

"Get up at once, Mary," she cried. "It's nearly half-past five and the tea not infused yet. Go and call your sister. Have you finished the toast yet, Grandma? Gracious! You have burned a piece. Give it here to me. I'll eat it. We can't have waste in this house." She took the burned toast and laid it ostentatiously on her plate, then she began needlessly to move everything on the tea table as if nothing had been done right and would, indeed, not be right until she had expiated the sin of the careless layer of the table by the resigned toil

of her own exertions.

"Whatna way to set the table!" she murmured disparagingly, as her daughter rose and went into the hall.

"Nessie Nessie," Mary called. "Tea time tea time!"

A small treble voice answered from upstairs, singing the words:

"Coming down! Wait on me!"

A moment later the two sisters entered the room, providing instantly and independent of their disparity in years for Nessie was twelve years old a striking contrast in character and features. Nessie differed diametrically from Mary in type. Her hair was flaxen, almost colourless, braided into two neat pigtails, and she had inherited from her mother those light, inoffensive eyes, misty with the delicate white-flecked blucncss of speedwells and wearing always that soft placating expression which gave her the appearance of endeavouring continually to please.