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you of that fact. You’re quite a shrewd enough little monkey to have found me out already. If there’s a man within a mile, I always prink and preen, and endeavor to look my best. And Gerald Waring’s here to dinner. He rang up to say he wanted to see Dick about some sheep. Mutton and wool again tonight, I suppose!”

She made a little grimace, then crossed over, and kissing Ann lightly on the cheek, she vanished.

The kiss surprised Ann more than anything else. What was she to do with such a woman?

“Should I ever really dislike her?” she wondered. For she knew that Vera had succeeded in disarming her. Resentment had vanished.

But Mrs. Holmes was not the only woman in the house who wished to look her best at dinner that night. Ann made faces at herself in the glass, and told herself she was a little fool, but nevertheless she donned her most becoming frock.

Well, she might have saved herself the trouble she thought later, with a laugh at her own expense. Beyond a casual “How-do-you-do,” Waring had not addressed one single remark to her. At dinner Dick Holmes suggested a game of bridge; and so, as soon as the children were safely in bed, Ann made her way out on to the front veranda where the others were sitting. But she was thinking more of Biddy now than of Waring—for Biddy had whispered to her as she tucked her up:

“I hate Mummy, but I love you.”

“Well, I certainly don’t love any one who can talk like that,” returned Ann coldly, though perhaps not quite truthfully, for she already felt a great attachment to both these little girls.