dark head, and the eager eyes; if she were at all shy, she did not show it, and she kissed her cousins and shook hands with Mr Hilton without a trace of the new manners for which Philippa was amusedly watching.

“I remember you now,” she said to Harry; “at least I think it was you who told me about a fox-terrier?”

“I have her here,” said Harry, flushing with pleasure.

He was a young man with, as she decided at once, an excellent face, although both in face and figure there was a wasteful inclination to breadth. The eyes were grey and honest, however, and would have redeemed worse faults. He laughed readily and happily, and Claudia reflected further that if he were never likely to set the Thames on fire, he was certain to be a popular man in his own neighbourhood. He did not interest her, but inwardly she gave him a half-contemptuous credit for a dozen safe and good qualities, which she reflected were probably allowed to run idly to seed. Claudia was in the first ferment of life, in which she required that every one’s work should be spread before them, parcelled out as distinctly as any allotment ground.

Yet her cousin Emily, the youngest of the three sisters, whose views ran in the same direction if in a different groove, roused in her an immediate antagonism. Emily was the useful woman of the town; secretary to two or three societies, warden, committee woman, what not! To her turned the thoughts of all the clergy when a new work had to be started, or an old one revived. She knew exactly how many pounds of butter and pots of jam were necessary for a parish tea; she slaved at school-treats, and did the work of two curates in her district. Claudia, whose schemes swept to the regeneration of mankind, and a general equalisation of things in the world, was partly contemptuous of, and partly irritated by Emily’s absorption in what she regarded as miserable make-shifts, unworthy of the consideration of any one who had passed a course in political economy, and whose papers had been favourably annotated by the examiner.

She spent her evening in garnering observations, telling herself that she was naturally curious about her new surroundings; what, however, continued to surprise her most, was that she herself appeared to excite less interest. Her cousins, Anne especially, accepted her with kindly goodwill, but when Philippa had said that from the first she was to be treated as one of the family, it was evident that she was not using a figure of speech. No one was in the least overwhelmed by her arrival, nor did it cause any divergence in the currents of interest which flowed strongly. Claudia listened, wondering whether under any circumstances of life could she be carried along by such currents; she hoped that would never be expected of her, but meanwhile could not doubt that expectations of some sort existed, and began to have an unacknowledged desire to say something which should astonish her hostesses. She had no such wish as to Harry Hilton, perhaps instinctively aware that she could impress him by simpler means, and she talked chiefly to him, suiting her remarks to his capacity, while listening as attentively as she could to the remarks which dropped from the others.

“Well, Emily,” Philippa was saying, “I warn you that if you’re going to trust to Mr Helmore’s eloquence, your meeting will be a dismal failure. He’s a stick. You had better get some one sent down from head-quarters, even if it does increase the expenses.”

“I really must try to avoid that,” said her sister, nervously; “and I assure you I haven’t come to the end of my resources yet.”

“You’re a wonderful woman.”

“Here’s Harry,” put in Anne. “Harry has done nothing for a long while.”

“They know my jests by heart. No, no: here is Miss Hamilton.”

“To make a speech?” asked Claudia, smiling.

She was careful to express no surprise, for, so far as she knew, there was no possible reason why she should not make a speech. But Harry was evidently of another opinion.

“Good gracious, no!” he protested. “Only to help in the entertainment.”

“Don’t ask her,” interrupted Philippa. “She’s a Radical.”

“Of course,” said Claudia, calmly; “and a Socialist. I don’t see how one can be anything else—that is to say, any one who takes the least interest in his fellow-creatures.”

She was a little disappointed at the effect upon her listeners. Harry, it is true, became rather redder, and Emily uttered a protesting “Oh!” but Philippa and Anne showed no signs of having received a shock.

They were smiling. It was Harry who hastened to say—

“Oh, you’ll be converted. You’ve come to the right house.”

“I don’t think I ever converted any one in my life except old Pentecost, who you all vow is half-witted,” said Philippa, shaking her head. “In these days no one is converted. He or she grows up with an idea, and takes in the newspaper which supports it. But I am rather glad about Claudia, and I think she shall make a speech after all.”

“Just as you like,” said Claudia, easily.

“Do you speak yourself?”

“Oh no; I have never been young enough.”

“Debating clubs do that for one, at any rate,” went on the girl, unheeding. “They take away all fear of one’s own voice. But I haven’t gone in for them much, because, of course, that sort of thing is not required in my profession.”

This time she was more successful in moving her audience. Emily said eagerly—“Your profession? Oh, Claudia, this is very interesting! What is it?”

“I am a landscape gardener. Didn’t you know that I had been studying at the college?”

“Yes, but we thought—well, we did not realise that you were actually working there.” She assured them that this had been the case, keenly enjoying their surprise. Philippa, however, asked at once—

“Well, but the result, the outcome? Shall you practice?”

“Certainly.”

“And take pay?”

“If I did not, I should have no right to enter the market at all. I go into the ranks, to be treated exactly like the others.”

“Only what is play to you is living to them,” remarked Philippa. “You can never place yourself on the same footing. However, as Emily says, this is interesting. Had you a particular fondness for gardening?” Claudia could not say that she had. “But one had to choose something. I could not have been idle. I did think of shop-dressing.”

“Shop-dressing?”

“Yes; a girl I know has taken to that. She starts very early every morning in order to arrange the things in certain shop-windows. It is pleasant work enough, and she gets three hundred a year. But it is rather a bore having to go out at such an unearthly hour, and on the whole I thought landscape gardening preferable.”

“But what is it? How do you do it?” asked Anne, leaning forward and smiling. She was the softest of the sisters, large and fair.

“I lay out gardens for people,” said Claudia. She scented ridicule, and was determined to speak simply.

“Gardens? Gardens on a great scale, I suppose?” put in Philippa. “A landscape means something vast.”

“Oh, not necessarily. Of course one might have to rearrange a park; but your garden, for instance, is a