"Margot, how sweet of you! I _am_ glad! Have you had lunch?"

"No. Give me anything you have. I'm awfully late. Bread and jam will do splendidly. Halloa, youngsters, how are you? We'll defer kisses, I think, till you are past the sticky stage. I've been prowling about the Park for the last two hours enjoying the spring breezes, and working out problems, and suddenly discovered it was too late to go home."

She sank down on a seat by the table, shaking her head in response to an anxious glance. "No, not my own affairs, dear; only Ron's! Can't the boys run away now, and let us have a chat? I know you have had enough of them by your face, and I've such a lot to say. Don't grumble, boys!

Be good, and you shall be happy, and your aunt will take you to the Zoo.

Yes, I promise! The very first afternoon that the sun shines; but first I shall ask mother if you have deserved it by doing what you are told."

"Run upstairs, dears, and wash, and put on your boots before Esther comes," said Mrs Martin fondly; and the boys obeyed, with a lingering obedience which was plainly due rather to bribery than training.

The elder of the two was a st.u.r.dy, plain-featured lad, uninteresting except to the parental eye; the younger a beauty, a bewitching, plump, curly-headed cherub of four years, with widely-opened grey eyes and a Cupid's bow of a mouth. Margot let Jim pa.s.s by with a nod, but her hand stretched out involuntarily to stroke Pat's cheek, and ruffle his curly pow.

Edith smiled in sympathetic understanding, but even as she smiled she turned her head over her shoulder to speak a parting word to the older lad.

"Good-bye, darling! We'll have a lovely game after tea!" Then the door shut, and she turned to her sister with a sigh.

"Poor Jim! everybody overlooks him to fuss over Pat, and it is hard lines. Children feel these things much more than grown-up people realise. I heard yells resounding from their bedroom one day last year, and flew upstairs to see what was wrong. There was Pat on the floor, with Jim kneeling on his chest, with his fingers twined in his hair, which he was literally dragging out by the roots. He was put to bed for being cruel to his little brother, but when I went to talk quietly to him afterwards, he sobbed so pitifully, and said, 'I only wanted some of his curls to put on, to make people love me too!' Poor wee man! You know what a silly way people have of saying, 'Will you give me one of your curls?' and poor Jim had grown tired of walking beside the pram, and having no notice taken of him. I vowed that from that day if I showed the least preference to either of the boys it should be to Jim.

The world will be kind to Pat; he will never need friends."

"No, Pat is all right. He has the 'come-hither eye,' as his mother had before him!"

"And his aunt!"

Margot chuckled complacently. "Well! it's a valuable thing to possess.

I find it most useful in my various plights. They are dear naughty boys, both of them, and I always love them, but rather less than usual when I see you looking so worn out. You have enough strain on you without turning nursemaid into the bargain."

Mrs Martin sighed, and knitted her delicate brows.

"I do feel such a wicked wretch, but one of the hardest bits of life at the present is being shut up with the boys in one room all day long.

They are very good, poor dears, but when one is racked with anxiety, it is a strain to play wild Indians and polar bears for hours at a stretch.

We do some lessons now, and that's a help--and Jack insisted that I should engage this girl to take them out in the afternoon. I must be a wretched mother, for I am thankful every day afresh to hear the door bang behind them, and to know that I am free until tea-time."

"Nonsense! Don't be artificial, Edie! You know that you are nothing of the sort, and that it's perfectly natural to be glad of a quiet hour.

You are a marvel of patience. I should snap their heads off if I had them all day, packed up in this little room. What have you had for lunch? No meat? And you look so white and spent. How wicked of you!"

"Oh, Margot," sighed the other pathetically, "it's not food that I need!

What good can food do when one is racked with anxiety? It's my mind that is ill, not my body. We can't pay our way even with the rent of the house coming in, unless Jack gets something to do very soon, and I am such a stupid, useless thing that I can do nothing to help."

"Except to give up your house, and your servants, and turn yourself into nurse, and seamstress, and tailor, and dressmaker, rolled into one; and live in an uproar all day long, and be a perfect angel of sympathy every night--that's all!--and try to do it on bread and cheese into the bargain! There must be something inherently mean in women, to skimp themselves as they do. You'd never find a man who would grudge tenpence for a chop, however hard up he might be, but a woman spends twopence on lunch, and a sovereign on tonics! Darling, will it comfort you most if I sympathise, or encourage? I know there are moods when it's pure aggravation to be cheerful!"

Edith sighed and smiled at one and the same moment.

"I don't know! I'd like to hear a little of both, I think, just to see what sort of a case you could make out."

"Very well, then, so you shall, but first I'll make you comfy. Which is the least lumpy chair which this beautiful room possesses? Sit down then, and put up your feet while I enjoy my lunch. I do love damson jam! I shall finish the pot before I'm satisfied... Well, to take the worst things first, I do sympathise with you about the table linen! One clean cloth a week, I suppose? It must be quite a chronicle of the boys' exploits! I should live on cold meat, so that they couldn't spill he gravy. And the spoons. They feel gritty, don't they? What is it exactly that they are made of? Poor old, dainty Edie! I know you hate it, and the idea that aliens are usurping your own treasures. Stupid people like Agnes would say that these are only pin-p.r.i.c.ks, which we should not deign to notice, but sensible people like you and me know that constant little p.r.i.c.ks take more out of one than the big stabs. If the wall-paper had not been so hideous, your anxieties would have seemed lighter, but it's difficult to bear things cheerfully against a background of drab roses. Here's an idea now! If all else fails, start a cheerful lodging-house. You'd make a fortune, and be a philanthropist to boot... This _is_ good jam! I shall have to hide the stones, for the sake of decency.--I know you think fifty times more of Jack than of yourself. It's hard luck to feel that all his hard work ends in this, and men hate failure. They have the responsibility, poor things, and it must be tragic to feel that through their mistakes, or rashness, or incapacity, as the case may be, they have brought hard times upon their wives. I expect Jack feels the table cloth even more than you do! You smart, but you don't feel, 'This is my fault!'"

"It isn't Jack's fault," interrupted Jack's wife quickly. "He never speculated, nor shirked work, nor did anything but his best. It was that hateful war, and the upset of the market, and--"

"Call it misfortune, then; in any case the fact remains that he is the bread-winner, and has failed to provide--cake! We are not satisfied with dry bread nowadays. You are always sure of that from father, if from no one else."

"But I loathe taking it! And I would sooner live in one room than go home again, as some people do. When one marries one loses one's place in the old home, and it is never given back. Father loves me, but he would feel it a humiliation to have me back on his hands. Agnes would resent my presence, and so would you. Yes, you would! Not consciously, perhaps, but in a hundred side-issues. We should take up your spare rooms, and prevent visitors, and upset the maids. If you ran into debt, father would pay your debts as a matter of course, but he grudges paying mine, because they are partly Jack's."

"Yes, I understand. It must be hateful for you, dear. I suppose no man wishes to pay out more money than he need, especially when he has worked hard to make it, as the pater has done; but if you take him the right way he is a marvel of goodness.--This year--next year--sometime-- never;--I'm going to be married next year! Just what I had decided myself... I must begin to pick up bargains at the sales."

Margot rose from her seat, flicking the crumbs off her lap with a fine disregard of the flower-wreathed carpet, and came over to a seat beside her sister.

"Now, shall I change briefs, and expatiate on the other side of the question? ... Why, Edie, every bit of this trouble depends on your att.i.tude towards it, and on nothing else. You are all well; you are young; you adore each other; you have done nothing dishonourable; you have been able to pay your debts--what does the rest matter? Jack has had a big disappointment. Very well, but what's the use of crying over spilt milk? Get a fresh jug, and try for cream next time! The children are too young to suffer, and think it's fine fun to have no nursery, and live near Edgware Road. If you and Jack could just manage to think the same, you might turn it all into a picnic and a joke. Jack is strong and clever and industrious, and you have a rich father; humanly speaking, you will never want. Take it with a smile, dear! If you will smile, so will Jack. If you push things to the end, it rests with you, for he won't fret if he sees you happy. He _does_ love you, Edie! I'm not sentimental, but I think it must be just the most beautiful thing in the world to be loved like that. I should like some one to look at me as he does at you, with his eyes lighting up with that deep, bright glow. I'd live in an attic with my Jack, and ask for nothing more!"

The elder woman smiled--a smile eloquent of a sadder, maturer wisdom.

She adored her husband, and gloried in the knowledge of his love of herself, but she knew that attics are not conducive to the continuance of devotion. Love is a delicate plant, which needs care and nourishment and discreet sheltering, if it is to remain perennially in bloom. The smile lingered on her lips, however; she rested her head against the cushions of her chair and cried gratefully--

"Oh, Margot, you do comfort me! You are so nice and human. Do you really, truly think I am taking things too seriously? Do you think I am depressing Jack? Wouldn't he think me heartless if I seemed bright and happy?"

"Try it and see! You can decide according to the effect produced, but first you must have a tonic, to brace you for the effort. I've a new prescription, and we are going to Edgware Road to get it this very hour."

"Quinine, I suppose. Esther and the boys can get it at the chemist's, but really it will do roe no good."

"I'm sure it wouldn't. Mine is a hundred times more powerful."

"Iron? I can't take it. It gives me headaches."

"It isn't iron. Mine won't give you a headache, unless the pins get twisted. It's a finer specific for low spirits feminine, than any stupid drugs. A new hat!"

Edith stared, and laughed, and laughed again.

"You silly girl! What nonsense! I don't need a hat."

"That's nonsense if you like! It depresses me to see you going about in that dowdy thing, and it must be a martyrdom for you to wear it every day. Come out and buy a straw shape for something and 'eleven-three',"

(it's always "eleven-three" in Edgware Road), "and I'll trim it with some of your sc.r.a.ps. You have such nice sc.r.a.ps. Then we'll have tea, and you shall walk part of the way home with me, and meet Jack, and smile at him and look pretty, and watch him perk up to match. What do you say?"

Edith lifted her eyes with a smile which brought back the youth and beauty to her face.

"I say, thank you!" she said simply. "You are a regular missionary, Margot. You spend your life making other people happy."

"Goodness!" cried Margot, aghast. "Do I? How proper it sounds! You just repeat that to Agnes, and see what she says. You'll hear a different story, I can tell you!"

CHAPTER FOUR.

MARGOT'S SCHEME.

The sisters repaired to Edgware Road, and after much searching finally ran to earth a desirable hat for at least the odd farthing less than it would have cost round the corner in Oxford Street. This saving would have existed only in imagination to the ordinary customer, who is presented with a paper of nail-like pins, a rusty bodkin, or a highly- superfluous b.u.t.ton-hook as a subst.i.tute for lawful change; but Margot took a mischievous delight in collecting farthings and paying down the exact sum in establishments devoted to eleven-threes, to the disgust of the young ladies who supplied her demands.

The hat was carried home in true Bohemian fashion, encased in a huge paper bag, and a happy hour ensued, when the contents of the sc.r.a.p-box were scattered over the bed, and a dozen different effects studied in turn. Edith sat on a chair before the gla.s.s with the skeleton frame perched on her head at the accepted fashionable angle, criticising fresh draperies and arrangement of flowers, and from time to time uttering sharp exclamations of pain as Margot's actions led to an injudicious use of the dagger-like pins. Her delicate finely-cut face and misty hair made her a delightful model, and she smiled back at the face in the mirror, reflecting that if you happened to be a pauper, it was at least satisfactory to be a pretty one, and that to possess long, curling eyelashes was a distinct compensation in life. Margot draped an old lace veil over the hard brim, caught it together at the back with a paste b.u.t.ton, and pinned a cl.u.s.ter of brown roses beneath the brim, with just one pink one among the number, to give the _cachet_ to the whole.

"There's Bond Street for you!" she cried triumphantly; and Edith flushed with pleasure, and wriggled round and round to admire herself from different points of view.

"It _is_ a tonic!" she declared gratefully. "You are a born milliner, Margot. It will be a pleasure to go out in this hat, and I shall feel quite nice and conceited again. It's so long since I've felt conceited!

I'm ever and ever so much obliged. Can you stay on a little longer, dear, or are you in a hurry to get back?"