But Georgina was growing impatient.  One evening she came home tired and out of temper.  She had been collecting the rents of some cottages belonging to her, and the periodical operation was always trying to everybody concerned.  Georgina’s secret conviction that “the poor in a loomp is bad” was stoutly met by her tenants’ firm belief that all landlords are extortionate thieves.  She came home, irritated by a number of petty annoyances, to find the immaculate little drawing-room, where every book and paper-knife knew its own place and kept it, given up to Arthur and Miss Denison, with coloured blocks, pictures and models used in that lady’s teaching, strewn all over the floor, while the furniture had been pushed unceremoniously aside.

“I won’t have this house made a bear-garden!” she said, angrily, to the dismayed teacher; and she went off straightway to find her sister.

Cynthia was in her own little den on the first floor happily engaged in trimming a new hat.  Georgina swept in upon her, shut the door, and stood with her back to it.

“Cynthia—­is this house yours or mine?”

As a matter of fact the house was Buntingford’s.  But Georgina was formally the tenant of it, while the furniture was partly hers and partly Cynthia’s.  In fact, however, Georgina had been always tacitly held to be the mistress.

Cynthia looked up in astonishment, and at once saw that Georgina was seriously roused.  She put down her work and faced her sister.

“I thought it belonged to both of us,” she said mildly.  “What is the matter, Georgie?”

“I beg you to remember that I am the tenant.  And I never consented to make it an institution for the training of imbeciles!”

“Georgie!—­Arthur is not an imbecile!”

“Of course I know he is an interesting one,” said Georgina, curtly.  “But all the same, from my point of view—­However, I won’t repeat the word, if it annoys you.  But what I want to know is, when are we to have the house to ourselves again?  Because, if this is to go on indefinitely, I depart!”

Cynthia came nearer to her sister.  Her colour fluttered a little.

“Don’t interfere just at present, Georgie,” she said imploringly, in a low voice.

The two sisters looked at each other—­Georgina covered with the dust and cobwebs of her own cottages, her battered hat a little on one side, and her coat and skirt betraying at every seam its venerable antiquity; and Cynthia, in pale grey, her rose-pink complexion answering to the gold of her hair, with every detail of her summer dress as fresh and dainty as the toil of her maid could make it.

“Well, I suppose—­I understand,” said Georgina, at last, in her gruffest voice.  “All the same, I warn you, I can’t stand it much longer.  I shall be saying something rude to Buntingford.”

“No, no—­don’t do that!”

“I haven’t your motive—­you see.”

Cynthia coloured indignantly.