"WONDERFUL BIRD!" There were but two days between the scenes described in the last chapter and the day fixed for Mary's departure, and during these two days Larry Twentyman's name was not mentioned in the house.

Mrs.
Masters did not make herself quite pleasant to her stepdaughter, having still some grudge against her as to the L20.

Nor, though she had submitted to the visit to Cheltenham, did she approve of it.

It wasn't the way, she said, to make such a girl as Mary like her life at Chowton Farm, going and sitting and doing nothing in old Lady Ushant's drawing-room.

It was cocking her up with gimcrack notions about ladies till she'd be ashamed to look at her own hands after she had done a day's work with them.