She had an odd slapdash way of wielding a spoon and fork. Stokes, already outraged by not being allowed to hand the dish, watched gloomily whilst what he afterwards described as drips and drabs clouded the surface of a carefully polished table. When she had come down to helping herself, and he had been permitted to hand artichokes and potatoes, he was dismissed.

“Thank you, Stokes-you can just leave the vegetables in front of Mr. Anthony.” Then, when he had gone out of the room, she broke in upon the general conversation with a heartfelt, “Oh, yes, that is so true-what Johnny was saying about being poor. My father had a very good living, but he hadn’t any private means, so when he and my mother died in the same year there wasn’t anything left, and I went to live with my father’s aunts. It was very good of them, because they hadn’t really enough for themselves, but they took me in and brought me up, and when they died I wasn’t young and I had never been trained for anything. What they had been living on went to another branch of the family, so it really was quite a frightening prospect. One should not concern oneself with money, but it is very difficult not to do so when people keep sending in their bills and you haven’t anything to pay them with.”

Johnny, who was sitting next to her, leaned over, patted her arm, and said,

“Darling, desist. We shall all burst out crying in a minute.”

She met his laughing look with an astonished one.

“Oh, no, my dear, that would be foolish-and there is no need, because everything turned out for the best. Your father was a widower and you were only four years old, so of course he needed someone to come and run the house. But after a little he engaged a housekeeper and asked me to marry him, because he thought it would work out better that way. And so it did, and we were all very happy together until he died. And even then we should have been quite comfortably off if he had not put so much of his money into a South American mine. Dear me, I am keeping you all waiting and letting my chicken get cold! Won’t anyone else have some more? It is so good.”

Anthony and Johnny responded by passing up their plates, and then Mrs. Fabian thought she would have a little more herself, and perhaps another artichoke and just one potato.

On a formal occasion Georgina would play hostess, but when it was just a family party it was customary to allow Mrs. Fabian the place of honour. Today Anthony Hallam was in Jonathan’s place, Georgina on his right with her back to the windows, Mirrie and Johnny on his left. He leaned toward Georgina and said,

“You have been warned! Don’t buy South American mines or listen to the confiding stranger with a gold brick or buried treasure. It’s better to go through life thinking what a wonderful chance you’ve missed than to have to go on telling yourself all the different sorts of fool you’ve been.”

She looked up, and down again. He had a glimpse of something, he wasn’t sure what. Why on earth had he said a thing like that? If he had wounded her, made her angry- She said, “I don’t think it arises as far as I am concerned,” and he knew that she was reminding him and herself that she was no longer likely to have a fortune either to keep or throw away. It had gone down the wind of Jonathan’s new fancy, and what he had seen in her eyes was a proud reproach.

On his left Mirrie asked in a small ingenuous voice,

“What is a gold brick?”

Whilst Johnny was enlightening her Stokes came back into the room bearing an apple tart.

JOHNNY FABIAN, coming into what they called the morning- room, a convenient family gathering-place when the more formal drawing-room was not in use, found Mirrie there. She was sitting at an old-fashioned secretaire and she was engaged in writing a letter. She lifted a furrowed brow when he came in, stretched her inky fingers, and said in heartfelt tones,

“Oh, how I do hate writing! Don’t you?”

He came and sat on the arm of the nearest chair.

“It depends who I am writing to.”

Mirrie sighed.

“I hate it always.”

“You wouldn’t if you were writing to someone whom you passionately adored.”

“Wouldn’t I?”

“Definitely not. Think of your favourite film star and imagine he had just sent you a signed photograph and a flaming love-letter. Wouldn’t the words just come tripping off the pen?”

Her brown eyes widened.

“Would they?”

“Do you mean to tell me they wouldn’t?”

“I don’t know-I haven’t got a favourite film star.”

“Unnatural child!”

She continued to gaze at him.

“You see, I’ve practically never been to the pictures. The relations I lived with only went to improving films with professors and people like experts showing you things about coal mining or growing beet for making into sugar, and if any of them had written me love-letters I should have put them in the fire.”

Johnny laughed.

“Snubs to the whole race of film stars! It’s no use their writing to you! Well, who is the lucky person who is going to get a letter? Let’s collaborate, and then I’ll run you over to Lenton and we’ll do a flick. Perhaps it will make you change your mind.”

“What is collaborate?” She said the word slowly, dividing it into syllables.

“Darling, didn’t they teach you anything at school?”

Mirrie’s lashes drooped.

“Oh, I’m not clever. They said I wasn’t.”

“Well, it means two people writing the same book. Or letter.”

“I don’t see how they can.”

“I’ll show you. You’ll see we’ll get along like a house on fire. Who is this letter to?”

She hesitated.

“Well, it’s to Miss Brown.”

“And who is Miss Brown?”

“She was one of the people at school.”

“Do you mean one of the mistresses?”

Mirrie gazed.

“There were two Miss Browns. The letter is to Miss Ethel Brown, because I promised to write to her and tell her how I was getting on.”

“All right, that won’t take us long. How far have you got?”

She picked up a sheet of paper and read from it:

“Dear Miss Brown

I said I would write, so I am writing. I hope you are quite well. This is a very nice place. The house has seventeen rooms without counting the cellars. Some of them are big. There are bathrooms made out of some of the bedrooms because people didn’t worry about baths when the house was built. It is what they call Georgian. There are beautiful things in it, and silver dishes with covers in the dining-room. Everyone is very kind to me, even Georgina. You said she wouldn’t be, but she is quite. Uncle Jonathan is very kind. He gave me a cheque for a hundred pounds to get my dress for the dance and other things. It was the dress with white frills. He has given me a lot of things. I think he has a great deal of money. He says I am to be like his daughter and he is putting it into his will. It is very kind of him.”

She lifted her eyes from the page and said, “That’s as far as I’ve got.”

It took a good deal to surprise Johnny Fabian, but this artless epistle actually startled him. He experienced a strong desire to know more, and most particularly to discover why Miss Ethel Brown should be the recipient of these interesting confidences. When Mirrie, pursuing the theme upon which her letter had ended, said, “It’s dreadfully kind of Uncle Jonathan, isn’t it?” he said yes it was, and enquired,

“But why write to Miss Brown?”

“I said I would.”

Johnny’s eyebrows rose.

“About Jonathan?”

“About how I got on.”

He laughed.

“Well, I should say you had got off! With Jonathan anyhow!”

She repeated what she had said before, but with an added emphasis.

“It’s very kind of him.”

“He really said he was going to adopt you?”

“Oh, no, he didn’t say that. He said he was going to treat me like his daughter, and that I would have what a daughter would have in his will. He said he had told Georgina, and that he wanted everyone to know just how he thought about me.”