DOMESTICITY INVADED I Early in the afternoon, two days later, Hilda came, with an air of reproach, into her mother's empty bedroom.

Mrs.Lessways had contracted a severe cold in the head, a malady to which she was subject and which she accepted with fatalistic submission, even pleasurably giving herself up to it, as a martyr to the rack.

Mrs.Lessways' colds annoyed Hilda, who out of her wisdom could always point to the precise indiscretion which had caused them, and to whom the spectacle of a head wrapped day and night in flannel was offensively ridiculous.

Moreover, Hilda in these crises was further and still more acutely exasperated by the pillage of her handkerchiefs.

Although she possessed a supply of handkerchiefs far beyond her own needs, she really hated to lend to her mother in the hour of necessity.