in a strange land upon marriage, at the bottom of her heart she had considered herself just a trifle superior to the strange land and its ways.  This feeling, confirmed by long experience, had never left her.  It was this feeling which induced her to continue making her own pastry—­ with two thoroughly trained “great girls” in the house!  Constance could make good pastry, but it was not her mother’s pastry.  In pastry-making everything can be taught except the “hand,” light and firm, which wields the roller.  One is born with this hand, or without it.  And if one is born without it, the highest flights of pastry are impossible.  Constance was born without it.  There were days when Sophia seemed to possess it; but there were other days when Sophia’s pastry was uneatable by any one except Maggie.  Thus Mrs. Baines, though intensely proud and fond of her daughters, had justifiably preserved a certain condescension towards them.  She honestly doubted whether either of them would develop into the equal of their mother.

“Now you little vixen!” she exclaimed.  Sophia was stealing and eating slices of half-cooked apple.  “This comes of having no breakfast!  And why didn’t you come down to supper last night?”

“I don’t know.  I forgot.”

Mrs. Baines scrutinized the child’s eyes, which met hers with a sort of diffident boldness.  She knew everything that a mother can know of a daughter, and she was sure that Sophia had no cause to be indisposed.  Therefore she scrutinized those eyes with a faint apprehension.

“If you can’t find anything better to do,” said she, “butter me the inside of this dish.  Are your hands clean?  No, better not touch it.”

Mrs. Baines was now at the stage of depositing little pats of butter in rows on a large plain of paste.  The best fresh butter!  Cooking butter, to say naught of lard, was unknown in that kitchen on Friday mornings.  She doubled the expanse of paste on itself and rolled the butter in—­supreme operation!

“Constance has told you—­about leaving school?” said Mrs. Baines, in the vein of small-talk, as she trimmed the paste to the shape of a pie-dish.

“Yes,” Sophia replied shortly.  Then she moved away from the table to the range.  There was a toasting-fork on the rack, and she began to play with it.

“Well, are you glad?  Your aunt Harriet thinks you are quite old enough to leave.  And as we’d decided in any case that Constance was to leave, it’s really much simpler that you should both leave together.”

“Mother,” said Sophia, rattling the toasting-fork, “what am I going to do after I’ve left school?”

“I hope,” Mrs. Baines answered with that sententiousness which even the cleverest of parents are not always clever enough to deny themselves, “I hope that both of you will do what you can to help your mother—­and father,” she added.

“Yes,” said Sophia, irritated.  “But what am I going to do?”