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you a morning’s happiness to tell me of?”
    â€œYes, that is just what we have. Buttermere implied that we had deserted you for about twelve hours.”
    â€œWell, that would hardly have mattered, my son. There is no reason why you should be tied to me. If you are enjoying your day, that is all your mother asks. And Father is always ready to come to me, if we should need each other. I don’t know why you should have two settled married people on your minds. It is we who should have you on ours, and so we have. But as it happens, Gregory and I have had a day together. He is just setting out to have tea with Mrs. Calkin. There he is, hurrying out of the house.”

Chapter III
    Gregory Waved His hand to Harriet as he hastened down the drive. In placing high for himself the appeal of experienced women, he made no exception of his mother. His tastes were well met at the house to which he was bound.
    His hostess was a massive widow of sixty, with hair brushed back from a solid brow, as if to reveal its proportions, and indeed with this purpose, and a broad-featured, honest, forbidding face, which changed with her every feeling. Her name of Agatha Calkin seemed to represent the two sides of her character. Her unmarried sister, Geraldine Dabis, who had taken the place of the younger for fifty-eight years, willingly for the last forty of them, was tall and thin and plain, and of a conscious elegance, with a habit of gesticulating with her long hands, and raising her voice to hold her position in talk. The youngest of the three, Kate Dabis, sister by half-blood to the other two, was an alert little woman of forty-six, with a dark, pleasant face, a quick, deep voice, and a studied kindliness and tolerance, which gained her less appreciation than if they had cost her nothing.
    â€œYou are all of you here. Not one of you ill or absent,” said Gregory, his manner addressing each.
    â€œOh, I was ill the last time you came!” said Geraldine in her carrying tones.
    â€œYou are thinking of the day when I was at the committee,” said Agatha, her voice of gentle comment holding its own.
    â€œI am never the interesting one, never frail or public-spirited,” said Kate.
    â€œI hope you are not anxious about your mother at themoment?” said Agatha, seeming to broach a matter between herself and Gregory.
    Geraldine leant forward.
    â€œNo, not more than usual. There is no definite reason for anxiety, or for expecting to be free of it.”
    â€œI think there is the especial something between you and your mother,” said Agatha.
    â€œWe are great friends; I am always hanging on to apron-strings. People with apron-strings know so much.”
    â€œOh, that is not the kind of thing we generally hear! It is a most refreshing point of view,” exclaimed Geraldine, raising her hands and dropping them on to her lap. “What we generally have to face, is the view that women of our age are too out-of-date and outside the scheme of things to be taken into account! Mercifully it is chivalrously unspoken. That is one advantage of belonging to the fairer sex.”
    â€œYoung people have not always much imagination,” said Agatha.
    â€œOr have they too much?” said Kate.
    â€œNo, not enough,” said Gregory. “Well, they don’t get anything, and serve them right.”
    â€œYou must be a great comfort to your mother,” said Agatha with quiet understanding. “I can follow so well the feeling between you, because of myself and my dear absent son.”
    â€œIt is hardly an exact parallel,” said Geraldine.
    â€œI never think,” continued Agatha, her eyes not diverted from their course, “that there is the same bond between mother and daughter. It never seems to me to be quite the same.”
    â€œThere should be, there should be,” said Kate.
    â€œNow between father and daughter,” said Agatha in full admission; “between father and