and her benevolence was eternally rising up and overpowering her
reason.

"What time did mother say she should be back?" Sophia asked.

"Not until supper."

"Oh! Hallelujah!" Sophia burst out, clasping her hands in joy. And
they both slid down from the counter just as if they had been
little boys, and not, as their mother called them, "great girls."

"Let's go and play the Osborne quadrilles," Sophia suggested (the
Osborne quadrilles being a series of dances arranged to be
performed on drawing-room pianos by four jewelled hands).

"I couldn't think of it," said Constance, with a precocious
gesture of seriousness. In that gesture, and in her tone, was
something which conveyed to Sophia: "Sophia, how can you be so
utterly blind to the gravity of our fleeting existence as to ask
me to go and strum the piano with you?" Yet a moment before she
had been a little boy.

"Why not?" Sophia demanded.

"I shall never have another chance like to-day for getting on with
this," said Constance, picking up a bag from the counter.

She sat down and took from the bag a piece of loosely woven
canvas, on which she was embroidering a bunch of roses in coloured
wools. The canvas had once been stretched on a frame, but now, as