then pale. What she would have said next will never be known to history, for at that instant the very good child, Penelope, appeared out of the house.

“Is you my Aunty Sophy?” she said. “How are you, Aunty Sophy? I am very pleased to see you.”

Miss Sophia stared for a moment at Penelope. Penelope was hideously attired, but she was at least clean. The other girls were anyhow. They were disheveled; they wore torn and unsightly skirts; their hair was arranged anyhow or not at all; on more than one face appeared traces of recent acquaintance with the earth in the shape of a tumble. One little girl with very black eyes had an ugly scratch across her left cheek; another girl had the gathers out of her frock, which streamed in the most hopeless fashion on the ground.

“How do you do?” said Aunt Sophia. “Where is your father? Will you have the goodness, little girl, to acquaint your father with the fact that his sister-in-law, Sophia Tredgold, has come?”

“Please come into the house, Aunt Sophy, and I’ll take you to father’s study—so I will,” exclaimed champion Penelope.

Penelope held up a chubby hand, which Miss Tredgold pretended not to see.

“Go on in front, little girl,” she said. “Don’t paw me. I hate being pawed by children.”

Penelope’s back became very square as she listened to these words, and the red which suffused her face went right round her neck. But she walked solemnly on in front without a word.

“Aunties are unpleasant things,” she said to herself; “but, all the same, I mean to fuss over this one.”

Here she opened a door, flung it wide, and cried out to her parent:

“Paddy, here comes Aunt Sophia Tredgold.”

But she spoke to empty air—Mr. Dale was still busy over his toilet.

“Whom are you addressing by that hideous name?” said Miss Sophia. “Do you mean to tell me you call your father Paddy?”

“We all do,” said Penelope.

“Of course we do,” said Verena, who had followed behind.

“That is our name for the dear old boy,” said Pauline, who stood just behind Verena, while all the other children stood behind Pauline.

It was in this fashion that the entire party invaded Mr. Dale’s sanctum. Miss Tredgold gazed around her, her face filled with a curious mixture of amazement and indignation.

“I had an intuition that I ought to come here,” she said aloud. “I did not want to come, but I obeyed what I now know was the direct call of duty. I shall stay here as long as I am wanted. My mission will be to bring order out of chaos—to reduce all those who entertain rebellion to submission—to try to turn vulgar, hoydenish little girls into ladies.”

“Oh, oh! I say, aunty, that is hard on us!” burst from Josephine.

“My dear, I don’t know your name, but it is useless for you to make those ugly exclamations. Whatever your remarks, whatever your words, I shall take no notice. You may struggle as you will, but I am the stronger. Oh! here comes—— Is it possible? My dear Henry, what years it is since we met! Don’t you remember me—your sister-in-law Sophia? I was but a little girl when you married my dear sister. It is quite affecting to meet you again. How do you do?”

Miss Tredgold advanced to meet her brother-in-law. Mr. Dale put both his hands behind his back.

“Are you sorry to see me?” asked Miss Tredgold. “Oh, dear, this is terrible!”

The next instant the horrified man found that Miss Tredgold had kissed him calmly and with vigor on each cheek. Even his own children were never permitted to kiss Mr. Dale. To tell the truth, he was the last sort of person anybody would care to kiss. His face resembled a piece of parchment, being much withered and wrinkled and dried up. There was an occasion in the past when Verena had taken his scholarly hand and raised it to her lips, but even that form of endearment he objected to.

“I forgive you, dear,” he said; “but please don’t do it again. We can love each other without these marks of an obsolete and forgotten age. Kissing, my dear, is too silly to be endured in our day.”

That Miss Tredgold should kiss him was therefore an indignity which the miserable man was scarcely likely to get over as long as he lived.

“And now, girls,” said the good lady, turning round and facing her astonished nieces, “I have a conviction that your father and I would have a more comfortable conversation if you were not present. Leave the room, therefore, my dears. Go quietly and in an orderly fashion.”

“Perhaps, children, it would be best,” said Mr. Dale.

He felt as though he could be terribly rude, but he made an effort not to show his feelings.

“There is no other possible way out of it,” he said to himself. “I must be very frank. I must tell her quite plainly that she cannot stay. It will be easier for me to be frank without the children than with them.”

So the girls left the room. Penelope, going last, turned a plump and bewildered face towards her aunt.

But Miss Tredgold took no more notice of Penelope than she did of the others. When the last pair of feet had vanished down the passage, she went to the door and locked it.

“What are you doing that for?” asked Mr. Dale.

“My dear Henry, I locked the door because I wish to have a quiet word with you. I have come here—I will say it plainly—for the sole purpose of saving you.”

“Of saving me, Sophia! From what?”

“From the grievous sin you are committing—the sin of absolutely and completely neglecting the ten daughters given to you by Providence. Do you do anything for them? Do you try in the least to help them? Are you in any sense of the word educating them? I scarcely know the children yet, but I must say frankly that I never came across more terribly neglected young people. Their clothes are in rags, they are by no means perfectly clean in their persons, and they look half-starved. Henry, you ought to be ashamed of yourself! I wonder my poor sister doesn’t turn in her grave! When I think that Alice was their mother, and that you are bringing them up as you are now doing, I could give way to tears. But, Henry, tears are not what are required. Action is the necessary thing. I mean to act, and nothing will turn me from that resolution.”

“But, my dear Sophia, I have not met you for years. To be frank with you, I had almost forgotten your existence. I am a terribly busy man, Sophia—a scholar—at least, I hope so. I do not think the children are neglected; they are well, and no one is ever unkind to them. There is no doubt that we are poor. I am unable to have the house done up as poor Alice would have liked to see it; and I have let the greater part of the ground, so that we are not having dairy produce or farm produce at present. The meals, therefore, are plain.”

“And insufficient; I have no doubt of that,” said Miss Tredgold.

“They are very plain,” he answered. “Perhaps you like dainty food; most ladies of your age do. I must be as frank with you as you are with me. You won’t like our table. Sometimes we do without meat for a week at a time.”

“I do not care if you never touch meat again,” said Miss Sophia. “Thank goodness, with all my faults, I am not greedy.”

“What a pity!” murmured Mr. Dale.

“What was that you said? Do you like greedy women?”

“No, Sophia; but I want to put matters so straight before you that you will consider it your bounden duty to leave The Dales.”

“Where my duty calls me I stay, whatever the circumstances, and however great the inconveniences,” remarked Miss Sophia.

“Well,