The elder girl, as she walked to and fro, spoke with nervous irritation in her voice.

“There is absolutely no excuse, mamma, and it’s weakness in you to pretend that there may be.  The woman has been gone for hours.  There’s her lunch on the table which has never been tasted, and the servant brought it up at twelve.”

She pointed to a tray on which were dishes whose cold contents bore out the truth of her remark.

“Perhaps she’s gone on strike,” said the younger daughter, without removing her eyes from H.M.S.  “Consternation.”  “I shouldn’t wonder if we went downstairs again we’d find the house picketed to keep away blacklegs.”

“Oh, you can always be depended on to talk frivolous nonsense,” said her elder sister scornfully.  “It’s the silly sentimental fashion in which both you and father treat work-people that makes them so difficult to deal with.  If the working classes were taught their place—­”

“Working classes!  How you talk!  Dorothy is as much a lady as we are, and sometimes I think rather more of a lady than either of us.  She is the daughter of a clergyman.”

“So she says,” sniffed the elder girl.

“Well, she ought to know,” replied the younger indifferently.

“It’s people like you who spoil dependents in her position, with your Dorothy this and Dorothy that.  Her name is Amhurst.”

“Christened Dorothy, as witness godfather and godmother,” murmured the younger without turning her head.

“I think,” protested their mother meekly, as if to suggest a compromise, and throw oil on the troubled waters, “that she is entitled to be called Miss Amhurst, and treated with kindness but with reserve.”

“Tush!” exclaimed the elder indignantly, indicating her rejection of the compromise.

“I don’t see,” murmured the younger, “why you should storm, Sabina.  You nagged and nagged at her until she’d finished your ball-dress.  It is mamma and I that have a right to complain.  Our dresses are almost untouched, while you can sail grandly along the decks of the ‘Consternation’ like a fully rigged yacht.  There, I’m mixing my similes again, as papa always says.  A yacht doesn’t sail along the deck of a battleship, does it?”

“It’s a cruiser,” weakly corrected the mother, who knew something of naval affairs.

“Well, cruiser, then.  Sabina is afraid that papa won’t go unless we all have grand new dresses, but mother can put on her old black silk, and I am going if I have to wear a cotton gown.”

“To think of that person accepting our money, and absenting herself in this disgraceful way!”

“Accepting our money!  That shows what it is to have an imagination.  Why, I don’t suppose Dorothy has had a penny for three months, and you know the dress material was bought on credit.”

“You must remember,” chided the mother mildly, “that your father is not rich.”

“Oh, I am only pleading for a little humanity.  The girl for some reason has gone out.  She hasn’t had a bite to eat since breakfast time, and I know there’s not a silver piece in her pocket to buy a bun in a milk-shop.”