"What do you think, Mitty? All the blinds are down at 'Littlecote,'"
announced Miss Jane Tebbs, bursting open the drawing-room door and
disturbing her sister in a surreptitious game of patience. In
well-ordered households the mistress is understood to have various
domestic tasks claiming her attention in the morning. Cards should
never appear until after sunset.

"Blinds down?" echoed Miss Tebbs, hastily moving a newspaper in the
hope of concealing her ill-doing. "Why are you in such a taking, Jane?
I suppose the family are away."

"Rubbish!" exclaimed her relative, sinking into a chair and dragging
off her gloves. "Did you ever know them all away together? Of course,
Mrs. Shafto goes gadding, and Douglas is at Sandhurst, but 'he' seldom
stirs. It is my opinion that something has happened. The Shaftos have
lived at 'Littlecote' for ten years, and I have never seen the blinds
down before to-day."

"Oh, you are so fussy and ready to imagine things!" grumbled Mitty, who
meanwhile had collected and pocketed the cards with surpassing
dexterity. "I don't forget the time when the curate had a smart lady
in his lodgings, and you nearly went out of your mind: rampaging up and
down the village, and telling everyone that the bishop must be
informed; and after all your outcry she turned out to be the young
man's mother!"

"That's true. I confess I was misled; but she made herself up to look
like a girl of twenty. You can't deny that she powdered her nose and
wore white shoes. But this is different. Drawn blinds are a sign of