What Timmy Did

that it was Friday morning. Then she remembere

ame as when he had left Old Place, everything was different, both in a spiritual and material sense. The War had made a deep wound, nay, far more than one wound, in the spiritual body politic of Old

over them all. John Tosswill was a man who had always made bad investments; but in that far-off time, "before the War,

rifle censoriously, why she wasn't "doing something," now that "every career is open to a girl, especially to one who did so well in the War," would perhaps have felt a little ashamed had they discovered that she was housemaid, parlourmaid, often

two or three days. She had put the knowledge of what was going to happen from her, with a kind of hard, defiant determination. But now she was sorry-sorry, that she had not taken her step-mother's advice

life. There had been two men, out in France, who had loved her, and lost no time in telling her so. One had been killed; the oth

they had been uttered yesterday, the cruel words he had flung at her during their last hour together when he had taunted her with not giving up everything and going off with him-and that though she had known that there was, even then, a part of his

ing right instead of wrong, in coming here to help Janet with her far from easy task with the y

go out and earn, say, three or four pounds a week, sending half the money, or a third of the money, home. But poor Betty was no self-deceiver-she was we

t they were both very selfish in their different ways, and only Janet knew all that everyone of them owed to Betty's hard, continuous work, and sense of order. Not that the girl was perfect b

t now have paid them. Then there had been the silly, vulgar but highly dangerous affair between Rosamund and their too attractive married "billet". Had Betty been at home that business would almost certainly have been checked in the bud. As for Dolly, she was worse than no good in the

rs ago. Now, beautiful in a sense as was the stately Georgian house, lovely as was the garden, thanks to Janet's cleverness and hard work, there was an air of s

't you think we could afford new furniture covers for the drawing-room?" and Betty had shaken her head. They co

y use from the financial point of view, could not now be made really comfortable at Old Place. Betty was ashamed of feeling how much it hurt her pride to know how concerned Godfrey would be to find how poor they had become. She would not have minded this if he had been poor himself. But she ha

table in the large, low-ceilinged room-a room which, in spite of the fact that everything in it was old and worn, had yet an air of dain

s nineteen. For one thing, the awful physical strain of her work in France had altered her, turned her from a girl into a woman. She had seen many terrible thing

ather spiteful words passing her by-for she had never cared either for learning or teaching. But now, as she gazed critically in her mirror, she told herself that, yes, she really did look rather like a nice governess-the sort of young woman a certain type of smart lady would describe as her "treasure". For

back with what had become a characteristic gesture, she went off and cal

into the kitchen, and a rather touching expression came over her old face. She had a strong, almost a maternal affection for her eldest nurseling, and she wondered how Miss Betty was

told you that Mr. Radmore is coming to-

noon while you was all out. He'll find everything there just as he left it.

int room in the long, long ago. And then she had decided that she couldn't bear to do so. The room had never been slept in since George ha

was wondering whether we couldn't make one of those

d for, too," sa

o so by something outside herself, Betty went across the kitche

nna soothingly, "do you

inked away the tears. "It's Georg

dom of the Blessed, my dear. You

believe that." She went across to the big old-fashioned kitchen range, and poured the boi

come in at seven, very seldom turned up till eight. And then, while Betty was carefully dusting the quaint, old-fashioned Staffordshire figures on the mantelpiece, t

t, too," said Betty. For the first time her colour heightened. "In any

hat you might borrow a bottle

ou see, Miss Pendarth's port is very good port, and we

uddenly remarked, a little irrelevantly:-"I suppose you've

she said, "I haven't had a chanc

whether Nanna had really come in to ask that question as