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practically extinct felt there was no table in the land too high for Cluny to aspire to. Addie Trumper was in her glory—her advice taken, the whole affair put under her management. She sat beside Cluny in the registry office like an exhibitor of prize livestock.
    â€œWe must remember,” said Miss Postgate repressively, “that your niece is completely inexperienced.”
    â€œSo’s most, these days,” retorted Addie.
    The two women measured each other: Miss Postgate, head and owner of a famous establishment, who when she died was to leave the sum of twenty-two thousand pounds, and Addie Trumper from Portobello Road.
    â€œThat is quite true,” conceded Miss Postgate. “Now I have here a place in Devonshire—”
    Cluny Brown made no remark at all. After two days of unremitting and stormy protest she had acknowledged defeat; but she was still bewildered by it. That her Uncle Arn no longer wanted her was incredible; and indeed Mr. Porritt, hard-pressed, admitted that he would be sorry to see her go. (“In a way,” he added hastily.) Who, demanded Cluny, would answer the telephone for him? Mr. Porritt, remembering what had happened when she answered it on Sunday, said no doubt he would manage. And who would mend his socks? Addie Trumper would. Addie was also finding a respectable woman to come and do for him, and he could take his dinner whenever he liked in Portobello Road. Addie Trumper, thought Cluny, was properly getting her claws in; and she turned on Addie such a look of plain hatred that it was a good thing Miss Postgate didn’t see.
    â€œTwo other maids,” Miss Postgate was saying, “under an excellent housekeeper—a small establishment of the best sort. I know her personally. And as she knows me personally, that would solve the question of references. Friars Carmel is of course right in the country—”
    â€œAll the better,” put in Mrs. Trumper.
    â€œâ€”but the wages are good. And if you wish your niece to get a thorough training, she couldn’t do better than under Mrs. Maile. I will write at once.” Miss Postgate gathered some papers together to show that the interview was at an end, and turned to Cluny with a pleasant smile. “I won’t say I hope to see you again, Miss Brown, because I don’t. I hope you’ll go to Devonshire and stay there many, many years …”
    â€œThere now!” cried Mrs. Trumper. “Cluny, say thank you!”
    Cluny moistened her lips. She had spoken only once before, to give her age, and Miss Postgate had been favourably impressed both by her deep voice and her subsequent silence.
    â€œHave you ever read Uncle Tom’s Cabin? ” asked Cluny distinctly.
    â€œNo, I don’t think I have,” said Miss Postgate, surprised.
    â€œYou ought,” said Cluny.
    II
    With dreadful smoothness the negotiations proceeded. Miss Postgate wrote to Mrs. Maile; Mrs. Maile, presumably after consultation with her employer, Lady Carmel, promptly replied, enclosing the money for a single third-class fare; Addie Trumper descended on Mr. Porritt’s to superintend the washing, mending and packing of all Cluny’s clothes. Uniform was provided; lucky girl, cried Mrs. Trumper vivaciously, not to have to find her own aprons! Cluny said nothing. During these last days she hardly opened her mouth, and Mr. Porritt was almost as silent. In the evening, when Addie at last took herself off, silence fell like an extinguisher on the once cheerful dwelling in String Street. Each had said his say, at almost too much length, and Mr. Porritt at least was determined not to begin again. But on Cluny’s last evening—exactly eight days after her excursion into studio life—he came in with a small oblong packet and laid it silently before her: it contained three old photographs, of himself, and Floss, and Cluny’s mother, arranged side by side in an English-gilt