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Miss Whipple pacified the child with wheedling words and a new shilling; but, wheedled she never so skilfully, she could win no retraction of Joan’s dislike. The child remained obstinately sullen, whispering to her doll her opinion of her guardian, refusing to be drawn into a discussion of the wonderful things a new shilling would buy.

The old lady lapsed into silence after a few minutes of fruitless cajolling. She sat on the bed and looked at the uninspiring wall before her, shaking her head from time to time. She was thinking of “a plan.”

Catherine Whipple was filled with good intentions. All her life she had been thus. She lived to do good to others, especially to those others whose domestic affairs had gone awry. To her a broken romance was as pitiable as an injured animal, and as deserving of charitable aid. Life had denied her a husband and had given her riches. It had made of her a dangerous busybody, perverting her maternal instincts to a mothering of the entire human race. She made it her business to get to the “heart of the trouble” in any matrimonial muddle which came within her ken, and did her best to “smooth things out” with an entire disregard for the wishes of the parties most concerned. On one or two occasions she had been harshly rebuffed, but her maternal bosom bore the blows unharmed.

The case of the Harleys aroused all her compassion. When Grace Harley had walked shyly into the dining-room some ten days before, Catherine Whipple had immediately discerned upon her face the infallible signs of domestic unhappiness. The old lady shied at the term “conjugal infelicity”—“domestic unhappiness” was infinitely more respectable.

She had lost no time in making the young woman’s acquaintance, and now she was experiencing a warm feeling of self-satisfaction. She had read the signs aright, and now she had her reward. Would it not be the crowning achievement of a worthy life,