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been without any one in the kitchen for a month, and I hate doing the cooking.”

“I only had time to get a shower at the club—the last set lasted so long.”

“Well, you’re clean, at any rate,” remarked Mrs. Ford, cheerfully. “Come along—let’s have dinner and then attack the serious work of the evening.”

The Fords’ house was neither very large nor very elaborately furnished. It was comfortable and homelike—a somewhat old-fashioned two-storied wooden building surrounded by a big garden and wide paddocks. But to Ann it appeared to be something of a patadise on earth. Here, at least, was peace and goodwill! And though the house might lay no claim to being either picturesque or artistic, it had a certain shabby dignity—the atmosphere of a home where happiness has been shared—that was attractive and restful. The garden was beautiful—shady trees, big rose-beds, masses of pink and blue and mauve hydrangea, tall lemon bushes with yellow fruit shining among the glossy green leaves, and wide herbaceous borders in which high blue delphiniums and sweet peas backed the lower growing ranks of white, and purple, and pink, and yellow flowers.

On the veranda, after dinner, they sat in deck-chairs to have their coffee—smoking, to keep the mosquitoes at bay—and afterwards adjourned to the drawing-room for bridge.

It was a quiet, but very happy week-end for Ann, and it gave her courage to face the coming week of struggle and disappointment. For she was quite convinced now that her business would peter out, and she would be left without resources at the end of six months. But she resolved to adopt as her motto “Suf-