the table laid for tea. Miss Merivale never had late dinner except when
she gave a dinner party. She liked the simple, old-fashioned ways she had
been accustomed to in her youth. But the table was laid with dainty care;
the swinging lamps shone upon shining silver that had been in the family
for two hundred years, on an old Worcester tea-set that had been bought by
Miss Merivale's grandmother, on bowls of early spring flowers gathered by
Rose that morning from the beautiful old garden at the back of the house.
Everything in the room spoke of long years of quiet prosperity. As Miss
Merivale took her accustomed seat at the tea-table and looked about her,
and then at Tom sitting opposite her, all unwitting of the terrible blow
that might be about to fall on him, she could scarcely keep back the sob
that rose to her lips.

Tom met her glance without seeing the trouble in it, and he smiled
cheerfully back at her.

"Well, how did the shopping get on?" he asked, "Did you remember the
seeds, Rose?"

Rose gave him a guilty look. "Oh, Tom, I quite forgot. Did you want them?"

He looked vexed for a moment, but only for a moment. "It does not matter.
I can write. I promised Jackson he should have them this week. Cousin Ann
has a wonderful show of anemones this year, Aunt Lucy. The square bed in
the back garden is brilliant with them. We must try them here again next
year. I don't intend to be satisfied till we have beaten Cousin Ann."

"She says the soil here doesn't suit anemones; they are fanciful
flowers," returned Miss Merivale. "Then you went to Broadhurst, Tom?"