"How d'you do?"

Mr. Hornby's glance skimmed lightly over Miss Pringle's surface and
returned at once to Nora's more pleasing face.

"Everything go off O. K.?" he inquired genially.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Funeral, I mean. Mother went. Regular outing for her."

Miss Pringle stiffened visibly in her chair and began to study the
pattern in the rug at her feet with an absorbed interest. Nora was
conscious of a wild desire to laugh, but with a heroic effort succeeded
in keeping her face straight out of deference to her elderly friend.

"Really?" she said, in a faint voice.

"Oh, yes," went on young Hornby with unabated cheerfulness. "You see,
mother's getting on. I'm the child of her old age--Benjamin, don't you
know. Benjamin and Sarah, you know," he explained, apparently for the
benefit of Miss Pringle, as he pointedly turned to address this final
remark to her.

"I understand perfectly," said Miss Pringle icily, "but it wasn't
Sarah."

"Wasn't it? When one of her old friends dies," he went on to Nora,
"mother always goes to the funeral and says to herself: 'Well, I've seen
_her_ out, anyhow!' Then she comes back and eats muffins for tea. She