knowledge stopped. Mrs. Rainham had set her to clean the clubs one day,
but her father, appearing unexpectedly, had taken them from her hands
with something like roughness. "No, by Jove!" he said. "You do a good
many odd jobs in this house, but I'm hanged if you shall clean my golf
sticks." Cecilia did not realize that the assumed roughness covered
something very like shame.

Money matters were rather confusing. A lawyer--also in the city--paid
her a small sum quarterly--enough to dress on, and for minor expenses.
Bob wrote that Aunt Margaret's affairs were in a beastly tangle. An
annuity had died with her, and many of her investments had been hit by
the war, and had ceased to pay dividends--had even, it seemed, ceased to
be valuable at all. There was a small allowance for Bob also, and some
day, if luck should turn, there might be a little more. Bob did not say
that his own allowance was being hoarded for Cecilia, in case he "went
west." He lived on his pay, and even managed to save something out of
that, being a youth of simple tastes. His battalion had been practically
wiped out of existence in the third year of the war, and after a
peaceful month in a north country hospital, near an aerodrome, the call
of the air was too much for him--he joined the cheerful band of flying
men, and soon filled his letters to Cecilia with a bewildering mixture
of technicalities and aviation slang that left her gasping. But he
got his wings in a very short time, and she was prouder of him than
ever--and more than ever desperately afraid for him.

The children's daily governess, a down-trodden person, left after
Cecilia had been in England for a few months, and the girl stepped
naturally into the vacant position until some one else should be found.
She had no idea that Mrs. Rainham made no effort at all to discover any
other successor to Miss Simpkins. Where, indeed, Mrs. Rainham