All the miseries which inevitably beset the steadfast worker when a strike occurs had fallen to Penelope’s lot.  She had scrambled hopelessly for a seat on a motor-’bus, or, driven by extremity into a fit of wild extravagance, had vainly hailed a taxi.  Sometimes she had been compelled to tramp the whole way home, through drenching rain, from some house at which she had been giving a lesson, in each case enduring the very kind of physical stress which plays such havoc with a singer’s only capital—­her voice.  She wondered if the strikers ever realised the extra strain they inflicted on people so much less able to contend with the hardships of a worker’s life than they themselves.

The whirr and snort of a taxi broke the thread of her thoughts.  With a grinding of brakes the cab came to a standstill at the entrance to the block of flats, and after a few minutes Emily, the unhurried maid-of-all-work, whom Nan’s sense of fitness had re-christened “our Adagio,” jerked the door open, announcing briefly: 

“A lidy.”

Penelope turned quickly, and a look of pleasure flashed into her face.

“Kitty!  Back in town at last!  Oh, it’s good to see you again!”

She kissed the new-comer warmly and began to help off her enveloping furs.  When these—­coat, stole, and a muff of gigantic proportions—­were at last shed, Mrs. Barry Seymour revealed herself as a small, plump, fashionable little person with auburn hair—­the very newest shade—­brown eyes that owed their shadowed lids to kohl, a glorious skin (which she had had the sense to leave to nature), and, a chic little face at once so kind and humorous and entirely delightful, that all censure was disarmed.

Her dress was Paquin, her jewellery extravagant, but her heart was as big as her banking account, and there was not a member of her household, from her adoring husband down to the kitchen-maid who evicted the grubs from the cabbages, who did not more or less worship the ground she walked on.  Even her most intimate women friends kept their claws sheathed—­and that, despite the undeniable becomingness of the dyed hair.

“We only got back to town last night,” she said, returning Penelope’s salute with fervour.  “So I flew round this morning to see how you two were getting on.  I can’t think how you’ve managed without the advantage of my counsels for three whole months!”

“I don’t think we have managed too well,” admitted Penelope drily.

“There!  What did I say?”—­with manifest delight.  “I told Barry, when he would go up to Scotland just for the pleasure of killing small birds, that I was sure something would happen in my absence.  What is it?  Nothing very serious, of course.  By the way, where’s Nan this morning?”

“Playing at a concert in Exeter.  At least, the concert took place last night.  I’m expecting her back this afternoon.”

“Well, that’s good news, not bad.  How did you induce her to do it?  She’s been slacking abominably lately.”