At supper, with her red, downcast eyes, she had returned to sheer girlishness again, overawed by her mother.  The meal had an unusual aspect.  Mr. Povey, safe from the dentist’s, but having lost two teeth in two days, was being fed on ’slops’—­bread and milk, to wit; he sat near the fire.  The others had cold pork, half a cold apple-pie, and cheese; but Sophia only pretended to eat; each time she tried to swallow, the tears came into her eyes, and her throat shut itself up.  Mrs. Baines and Constance had a too careful air of eating just as usual.  Mrs. Baines’s handsome ringlets dominated the table under the gas.

“I’m not so set up with my pastry to-day,” observed Mrs. Baines, critically munching a fragment of pie-crust.

She rang a little hand-bell.  Maggie appeared from the cave.  She wore a plain white bib-less apron, but no cap.

“Maggie, will you have some pie?”

“Yes, if you can spare it, ma’am.”

This was Maggie’s customary answer to offers of food.

“We can always spare it, Maggie,” said her mistress, as usual.  “Sophia, if you aren’t going to use that plate, give it to me.”

Maggie disappeared with liberal pie.

Mrs. Baines then talked to Mr. Povey about his condition, and in particular as to the need for precautions against taking cold in the bereaved gum.  She was a brave and determined woman; from start to finish she behaved as though nothing whatever in the household except her pastry and Mr. Povey had deviated that day from the normal.  She kissed Constance and Sophia with the most exact equality, and called them ‘my chucks’ when they went up to bed.

Constance, excellent kind heart, tried to imitate her mother’s tactics as the girls undressed in their room.  She thought she could not do better than ignore Sophia’s deplorable state.

“Mother’s new dress is quite finished, and she’s going to wear it on Sunday,” said she, blandly.

“If you say another word I’ll scratch your eyes out!” Sophia turned on her viciously, with a catch in her voice, and then began to sob at intervals.  She did not mean this threat, but its utterance gave her relief.  Constance, faced with the fact that her mother’s shoes were too big for her, decided to preserve her eyesight.

Long after the gas was out, rare sobs from Sophia shook the bed, and they both lay awake in silence.

“I suppose you and mother have been talking me over finely to-day?” Sophia burst forth, to Constance’s surprise, in a wet voice.

“No,” said Constance soothingly.  “Mother only told me.”

“Told you what?”

“That you wanted to be a teacher.”

“And I will be, too!” said Sophia, bitterly.

“You don’t know mother,” thought Constance; but she made no audible comment.

There was another detached, hard sob.  And then, such is the astonishing talent of youth, they both fell asleep.