At dinner he said suddenly to Mrs. Baines, who still wept:  “Now, mother, you must cheer up, you know.”

“Yes, I must,” she said quickly.  And she did do.

Neither Samuel nor Constance saw the card again.  Little was said.  There was nothing to say.  As Sophia had given no address she must be still ashamed of her situation.  But she had thought of her mother and sister.  She ... she did not even know that Constance was married ...  What sort of a place was Paris?  To Bursley, Paris was nothing but the site of a great exhibition which had recently closed.

Through the influence of Mrs. Baines a new servant was found for Constance in a village near Axe, a raw, comely girl who had never been in a ‘place.’  And through the post it was arranged that this innocent should come to the cave on the thirty-first of December.  In obedience to the safe rule that servants should never be allowed to meet for the interchange of opinions, Mrs. Baines decided to leave with her own servant on the thirtieth.  She would not be persuaded to spend the New Year in the Square.  On the twenty-ninth poor Aunt Maria died all of a sudden in her cottage in Brougham Street.  Everybody was duly distressed, and in particular Mrs. Baines’s demeanour under this affliction showed the perfection of correctness.  But she caused it to be understood that she should not remain for the funeral.  Her nerves would be unequal to the ordeal; and, moreover, her servant must not stay to corrupt the new girl, nor could Mrs. Baines think of sending her servant to Axe in advance, to spend several days in idle gossip with her colleague.

This decision took the backbone out of Aunt Maria’s funeral, which touched the extreme of modesty:  a hearse and a one-horse coach.  Mr. Povey was glad, because he happened to be very busy.  An hour before his mother-in-law’s departure he came into the parlour with the proof of a poster.

“What is that, Samuel?” asked Mrs. Baines, not dreaming of the blow that awaited her.

“It’s for my first Annual Sale,” replied Mr. Povey with false tranquillity.

Mrs. Baines merely tossed her head.  Constance, happily for Constance, was not present at this final defeat of the old order.  Had she been there, she would certainly not have known where to look.

II

“Forty next birthday!” Mr. Povey exclaimed one day, with an expression and in a tone that were at once mock-serious and serious.  This was on his thirty-ninth birthday.

Constance was startled.  She had, of course, been aware that they were getting older, but she had never realized the phenomenon.  Though customers occasionally remarked that Mr. Povey was stouter, and though when she helped him to measure himself for a new suit of clothes the tape proved the fact, he had not changed for her.  She knew that she too had become somewhat stouter; but for herself, she remained exactly the