delightful size. And now you know why your river enchanted me. I always wanted to try my hand upon a river.”

“Did I not tell you she was a Radical?” asked Philippa, addressing the others. “Imagine our good, respectable, steady-going river turned out of his centuries-old groove! No, Claudia, we are not going to deliver him up to your tender mercies, and could not if we would. A river—a real river—is a more important personage than you conceive; not to be trifled with even so much as the government of a country.”

“That is what I say,” returned Claudia, smiling. “England is so full of absurd restrictions that, do what you will, you run your head against them.”

“You will have to try the colonies,” said Anne.

“Or a thousand miles or so of prairies.”

Claudia coloured. She had an uncomfortable conviction that her cousin Philippa was mocking.

“It is opportunity I want—not size,” she said with dignity, and as she spoke she looked at Harry, who had been listening to the conversation in amazement—mute, except for an occasional muttered “By Jove!” But to her look he answered at once.

“Of course,” he said boldly. “There must be dozens of people who want their places set to rights. Would Thornbury do to begin with? If you would come to Thornbury, you could have a free hand, and lots of flowers to do anything with.”

Claudia turned her face towards him with a sigh.

“I am not a florist, and I know nothing whatever about flowers, because they don’t in the least enter into my scheme. But as to grouping and re-arranging trees, if I can be of any use I shall be happy to do all I can.”

“The Thornbury trees!” murmured Philippa.

“And transplanting is so easily managed now,” the girl went on, “that really I can’t conceive why people are not more enterprising in trying new effects. If you think of it, how should the planting at haphazard which went on everywhere, produce the best combinations? Whereas, bring art to bear, and the whole falls into a beautiful unity.”

He agreed enthusiastically.

“Exactly. I never thought of it before, but now you speak of it, it does seem extraordinary that we should leave so much to chance, I believe ours may be very much improved.”

Philippa, with an amused twinkle in her eyes, inquired whether Claudia had found an opportunity of trying her powers.

“At the college, of course. But I am hoping for larger work,” said Claudia, eagerly. “It is like everything else, one has to begin in a small way, and get known by degrees.”

And, as she spoke, vague shadows floated before Harry Hilton’s eyes. He saw a girl’s light figure flitting along the grassy rides at Thornbury, transformations, golden sunshine everywhere. The evening was touched to him with a strange strong delight which marked it out from all the other evenings he had ever known.

Claudia herself awoke to enthusiasm and plans. From her window she saw food for both in a stretch of fair wooded country lying in a morning haze, with the silver arrow of the river flashing through the green. Her thoughts immediately busied themselves with planting, thinning, and grouping, and Harry Hilton’s cheerful whistle to his dog under her window only suggested a hope that he would carry out his proposal of getting her a free hand at Thornbury. She resolved to talk to her cousins that day, and explain fully how she was desirous of making their house her head-quarters, holding herself absolutely at liberty to go and come as her calling required. She expected argument and disapproval, since it was unlikely that three sisters living on the outskirts of a provincial town, should have sufficiently caught the spirit of the age, and the new development of woman, not to detect strong objections in any career which offered independence to a girl of her age. But against argument she felt herself duly fortified, even thirsted for it as a young soldier might thirst for the first brush of battle. She was the least little bit in the world therefore disappointed that her announcement of the evening before had not shocked them into stiffer protest, but she told herself that they had not been alone, and that the struggle would be in private.

“You see, Philippa,” she found herself saying with eagerness, when after several vain attempts to capture her cousin, she had run her to the earth in the small morning-room which was called the den, “I should be simply wretched if I had nothing to do, and in these days everything is over-stocked. I dare say you feel that it would be more useful to undertake something in the philanthropic line, but I haven’t the least inclination for that sort of thing—I should hate to go about collecting rents from poor creatures who can’t pay, and oughtn’t to be made to; or dragging girls into clubs. I couldn’t, indeed!”

“My dear,” said Philippa, “please don’t set me up as an imaginary nine-pin in order to knock me down flat. I assure you you will discover I haven’t nearly so many opinions as you have, for as I grow older, I find a privilege of age consists in putting away pre-conceived notions, and possessing one’s self of a receptive mind.”

Claudia glanced quickly at her.

“Most people,” murmured the girl, “rather object.”

“We shan’t try you in that way. So long as we ourselves are not improved upon by force, nobody here will interfere with your improving other people. And really I thought Harry’s a handsome offer last night.”

“Oh,” said Claudia, carelessly, “it didn’t come from conviction. He thought I was a girl and not bad-looking, and that I didn’t mean actual business.”

Miss Cartwright smiled behind a newspaper; but Claudia’s tone was quite frank and free from self-consciousness.

“He’s not very brilliant, is he?” she went on. “You like him, I can see, and I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, but of course his must be a terribly deteriorating sort of life. Imagine a man caring to knock about with no particular object! I don’t myself understand how any man could stand such an existence, or woman either. Of course that is now getting to be recognised, only we unfortunate women, having been in the groove for centuries, find it hard to emancipate ourselves; while men have had all the advantages of action and movement, so that, luckily for them, a dilly-dallying life strikes lookers-on as a failure, and public opinion forces them into some sort of exertion. That’s the secret of their success, and it is horribly unfair upon women, but it’s going to be different now!” she exclaimed with enthusiasm.

Philippa groaned.

“If that means we are to have more than ever to do, what will become of us?”

“Oh, this will be work worth the doing!” cried Claudia.

“I see. Well, my dear, do it. As I said before, no one here will say you nay, provided their own liberties are guaranteed to them. Do you begin at once, or is this to be an off day?”

“I am going on the bicycle to try a new brake, and then I may draw out some plans in the garden.”

“You will find a comfortable seat under the great beech.”

And there, some hour later, Philippa, having finished her accounts and written letters, beheld Claudia established, surrounded by fluttering papers and pencil sketches, which Harry Hilton carefully guarded from the wind. Miss Cartwright, to tell the