her voice in favour of leaving them alone. “She hated everything that reminded her of what was going to happen!” she said.

The children took the prospect cheerfully until the very end. Nurse had enlightened them on the grandeur of a title. “Miss Sydney would ride in her own carriage, pretty dear! with powdered footmen on the box, and silver on the harness, and wear satin every day. It would do her old eyes good to see her!”

“You needn’t be such a silly ass about it, Syd,” Freddie had said, after one of nurse’s conversations. “I don’t mind you being a Lady-what-do-you-call-it myself! You’ll keep lots of horses and ponies and merry-go-rounds in your park, and we’ll all come and stay with you and ride ’em!”

“You’ll do nothing of the kind!” Hugh told him, rather savagely, and was not greatly mollified by Freddie’s answer:

“Well, you needn’t! But Syd’s promised to ask me and Prissie, haven’t you, Syd?”

“Oh, I shall want you all!” poor Sydney had cried. “I do hope Lord St. Quentin will[31] be kind, and ask you all to come and stay soon, very soon!”

[31]

“No chance of that!” Hugh had muttered beneath his breath; and then had put his arm round Sydney, calling himself “a beast to make her cry, and, of course, they would meet again, yes, very soon indeed!”

And then had come the last evening of the old happy, childish life. Hugh had been very white and silent as it drew on, and Mildred’s eyes kept filling with tears, so that she could not see to work, and Dolly was crying quietly in a corner, and the boys gave up talking about the hunters Sydney would keep and the motor-cars she would drive, and relapsed into a gloomy silence; and Fred and Prissie realised suddenly what “good-bye” meant, and broke down and howled.

Perhaps that was rather a good thing, after all, for everybody was so busy comforting them and making auguries of future meetings that there was not very much time to be miserable.

And when one is not yet eighteen, one is sleepy when ten o’clock comes round, however wretched one may be feeling. Sydney fully expected to lie awake all night, but she and Dolly were both sound asleep when father and mother looked, shading their candle, into the[32] small room where to-morrow night one would be all alone.

[32]

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