throw up his place, come back to England, and what were they to do with him this time?  The journey out here, which meant the loss of a term’s work, became an extravagance and not the just and wonderful holiday due to her after fifteen years of punctual lecturing and correcting essays upon English literature.  Emily, her sister, who was a teacher also, wrote:  “We ought to be prepared, though I have no doubt Hubert will be more reasonable this time.”  And then went on in her sensible way to say that she was enjoying a very jolly time in the Lakes.  “They are looking exceedingly pretty just now.  I have seldom seen the trees so forward at this time of year.  We have taken our lunch out several days.  Old Alice is as young as ever, and asks after every one affectionately.  The days pass very quickly, and term will soon be here.  Political prospects not good, I think privately, but do not like to damp Ellen’s enthusiasm.  Lloyd George has taken the Bill up, but so have many before now, and we are where we are; but trust to find myself mistaken.  Anyhow, we have our work cut out for us. . . .  Surely Meredith lacks the human note one likes in W. W.?” she concluded, and went on to discuss some questions of English literature which Miss Allan had raised in her last letter.

At a little distance from Miss Allan, on a seat shaded and made semi-private by a thick clump of palm trees, Arthur and Susan were reading each other’s letters.  The big slashing manuscripts of hockey-playing young women in Wiltshire lay on Arthur’s knee, while Susan deciphered tight little legal hands which rarely filled more than a page, and always conveyed the same impression of jocular and breezy goodwill.

“I do hope Mr. Hutchinson will like me, Arthur,” she said, looking up.

“Who’s your loving Flo?” asked Arthur.

“Flo Graves—­the girl I told you about, who was engaged to that dreadful Mr. Vincent,” said Susan.  “Is Mr. Hutchinson married?” she asked.

Already her mind was busy with benevolent plans for her friends, or rather with one magnificent plan—­which was simple too—­they were all to get married—­at once—­directly she got back.  Marriage, marriage that was the right thing, the only thing, the solution required by every one she knew, and a great part of her meditations was spent in tracing every instance of discomfort, loneliness, ill-health, unsatisfied ambition, restlessness, eccentricity, taking things up and dropping them again, public speaking, and philanthropic activity on the part of men and particularly on the part of women to the fact that they wanted to marry, were trying to marry, and had not succeeded in getting married.  If, as she was bound to own, these symptoms sometimes persisted after marriage, she could only ascribe them to the unhappy law of nature which decreed that there was only one Arthur Venning, and only one Susan who could marry him.  Her theory, of course, had the merit of being fully supported by her own case.  She