“No doubt, It would probably make you very ill if you attempted it.  By the way, I hope that you will come to some of our Guild meetings.  I shall see that tickets are sent you.”

“Your Guild?”

“It is not yet formed, but I shall lose no time in forming a committee.  It is my habit to establish a branch of the Emancipation Guild wherever I go.  There is a Mrs. Sanderson in Anerley who is already one of the emancipated, so that I have a nucleus.  It is only by organized resistance, Miss Williams, that we can hope to hold our own against the selfish sex.  Must you go, then?”

“Yes, we have one or two other visits to pay,” said the elder sister.  “You will, I am sure, excuse us.  I hope that you will find Norwood a pleasant residence.”

“All places are to me simply a battle-field,” she answered, gripping first one and then the other with a grip which crumpled up their little thin fingers.  “The days for work and healthful exercise, the evenings to Browning and high discourse, eh, Charles?  Good-bye!” She came to the door with them, and as they glanced back they saw her still standing there with the yellow bull pup cuddled up under one forearm, and the thin blue reek of her cigarette ascending from her lips.

“Oh, what a dreadful, dreadful woman!” whispered sister Bertha, as they hurried down the street.  “Thank goodness that it is over.”

“But she’ll return the visit,” answered the other.  “I think that we had better tell Mary that we are not at home.”

——­

CHAPTER III.

DWELLERS IN THE WILDERNESS.

How deeply are our destinies influenced by the most trifling causes!  Had the unknown builder who erected and owned these new villas contented himself by simply building each within its own grounds, it is probable that these three small groups of people would have remained hardly conscious of each other’s existence, and that there would have been no opportunity for that action and reaction which is here set forth.  But there was a common link to bind them together.  To single himself out from all other Norwood builders the landlord had devised and laid out a common lawn tennis ground, which stretched behind the houses with taut-stretched net, green close-cropped sward, and widespread whitewashed lines.  Hither in search of that hard exercise which is as necessary as air or food to the English temperament, came young Hay Denver when released from the toil of the City; hither, too, came Dr. Walker and his two fair daughters, Clara and Ida, and hither also, champions of the lawn, came the short-skirted, muscular widow and her athletic nephew.  Ere the summer was gone they knew each other in this quiet nook as they might not have done after years of a stiffer and more formal acquaintance.