Then the old lady uttered a small cry of dismay.

“He thinks he can’t come, after all,” she said.

Maggie had a moment of very acute annoyance.

“What does he say?  Why not?” she asked.

There was a pause.  She watched Mrs. Baxter’s lips moving slowly, her glasses in place; saw the page turned, and turned again.  She took another piece of toast.  There are few things more irritating than to have fragments of a letter doled out piecemeal.

“He doesn’t say.  He just says he’s very busy indeed, and has a great deal of way to make up.”  The old lady continued reading tranquilly, and laid the letter down.

“Nothing more?” asked Maggie, consumed with annoyance.

“He’s been to the theatre once or twice....  Dear Laurie!  I’m glad he’s recovering his spirits.”

Maggie was very angry indeed.  She thought it abominable of the boy to treat his mother like that.  And then there was the shooting—­not much, indeed, beyond the rabbits, which the man who acted as occasional keeper told her wanted thinning, and a dozen or two of wild pheasants—­yet this shooting had always been done, she understood, at Christmas, ever since Master Laurie had been old enough to hold a gun.

She determined to write him a letter.

When breakfast was over, with a resolved face she went to her room.  She would really tell this boy a home-truth or two.  It was a—­a sister’s place to do so.  The mother, she knew well enough, would do no more than send a little wail, and would end by telling the dear boy that, of course, he knew best, and that she was very happy to think that he was taking such pains about his studies.  Someone must point out to the boy his overwhelming selfishness, and it seemed that no one was at hand but herself.  Therefore she would do it.

She did it, therefore, politely enough but unmistakably; and as it was a fine morning, she thought that she would like to step up to the village and post it.  She did not want to relent; and once the letter was in the post-box, the thing would be done.

It was, indeed, a delicious morning.  As she passed out through the iron gate the trees overhead, still with a few brown belated leaves, soared up in filigree of exquisite workmanship into a sky of clear November blue, as fresh as a hedge-sparrow’s egg.  The genial sound of cock-crowing rose, silver and exultant, from the farm beyond the road, and the tiny street of the hamlet looked as clean as a Dutch picture.

She noticed on the right, just before she turned up to the village on the left, the grocer’s shop, with the name “Nugent” in capitals as bright and flamboyant as on the depot of a merchant king.  Mr. Nugent could be faintly descried within, in white shirt-sleeves and an apron, busied at a pile of cheeses.  Overhead, three pairs of lace curtains, each decked with a blue bow, denoted the bedrooms.  One of them must have been Amy’s.  She wondered which....