"Run up-stairs, my pets," she said. "Hester, you should not keep them down here now. It is past their tea-time."

"We came ourselves, mother," said Regie. "Fruälein said we might, to show Auntie Hester our secrets."

"Well, never mind; run away now," said the poor mother, sitting down heavily in a low chair, "and take Boulou."

"You are tired out," said Hester, slipping on to her knees and unlacing her sister-in-law's brown boots.

Mrs. Gresley looked with a shade of compunction at the fragile kneeling figure, with its face crimsoned by the act of stooping and by the obduracy of the dust-ingrained boot-laces. But as she looked she noticed the flushed cheeks, and, being a diviner of spirits, wondered what Hester was ashamed of now.

As Hester rose her sister-in-law held out, with momentary hesitation, a thin paper bag, in which an oval form allowed its moist presence to be discerned by partial adhesion to its envelope.

"I saw you ate no luncheon, Hester, so I have brought you a little sole for supper."

Some of us poor Marthas spend all our existence, so to speak, in the kitchens of life. We never get so far as the drawing-room. Our conquests, our self-denials, are achieved through the medium of suet and lard and necks of mutton. We wrestle with the dripping, and rise on stepping-stones—not of our dead selves, but of sheep and oxen—to higher things.

The sole was a direct answer to prayer. Mrs. Gresley had been enabled to stifle her irritation against this delicate, whimsical, fine lady of a sister-in-law—laced in, too, we must not forget that—who, in Mrs. Gresley's ideas, knew none of the real difficulties of life, its butcher's bills, its monthly nurses, its constant watchfulness over delicate children, its long, long strain at two ends which won't meet. We must know but little of our fellow-creatures if the damp sole in the bag appears to us other than the outward and homely sign of an inward and spiritual conquest.

As such Hester saw it, and she kissed Mrs. Gresley and thanked her, and then ran, herself, to the kitchen with the peace offering, and came back with her sister-in-law's down-at-heel in-door shoes.

Mr. Gresley was stabling his bicycle in the hall as she crossed it. He was generally excessively jocose with his bicycle. He frequently said, "Whoa, Emma!" to it. But to-day he, too, was tired, and put Emma away in silence.

When Hester returned to the drawing-room Mrs. Gresley had recovered sufficiently to notice her surroundings. She was sitting with her tan-stockinged feet firmly planted on the carpet instead of listlessly outstretched, her eyes ominously fixed on the tea-table and seed-cake.

Hester's silly heart nudged her side like an accomplice.

"Who has been here to tea?" said Mrs. Gresley. "I met the Pratts and the Thursbys in Westhope."

Hester was frightened. We need to be in the presence of those who judge others by themselves.

"The Bishop was here and Rachel West," she said, coloring. "They left a few minutes ago."