These Twain. Arnold Bennett

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      "But you've got a very good tenant, Maggie," said Auntie Hamps enthusiastically.

      "She's got a very good tenant, admitted!" Albert said judicially and almost sternly. "But she'd never have any difficulty in finding a very good tenant for that house. That's not the point. The point is that the investment really isn't remunerative. Maggie could do much better for herself than that. Very much better. Why, if she went the right way about it she could get ten per cent on her money! I know of things… And I bet she doesn't get three and a half per cent clear from the house. Not three and a half." He glanced reproachfully at Hilda.

      "Do you mean the rent's too low?" Hilda questioned boldly.

      He hesitated, losing courage.

      "I don't say it's too low. But Maggie perhaps took the house over at too big a figure."

      Maggie looked up at her brother-in-law.

      "And whose fault was that?" she asked sharply. The general surprise was intensified. No one could understand Maggie. No one had the wit to perceive that she had been truly annoyed by Auntie Hamps's negligence in regard to jam, and was momentarily capable of bitterness. "Whose fault was that?" she repeated. "You and Clara and Edwin settled it between you. You yourself said over and over again it was a fair figure."

      "I thought so at the time! I thought so at the time!" said Albert quickly. "We all acted for the best."

      "I'm sure you did," murmured Auntie Hamps.

      "I should think so, indeed!" murmured Clara, seeking to disguise her constraint by attentions to the sleeping Rupert.

      "Is Edwin thinking of buying, then?" Albert asked Hilda in a quiet, studiously careless voice.

      "We've discussed it," responded Hilda.

      "Because if he is, he ought to take it over at the price Mag took it at. She oughtn't to lose on it. That's only fair."

      "I'm sure Edwin would never do anything unfair," said Auntie Hamps.

      Hilda made no reply. She had already heard the argument from Edwin, and Albert now seemed to her more tedious and unprincipled than usual. Her reason admitted the force of the argument as regards Maggie, but instinct opposed it.

      Nevertheless she was conscious of sudden sympathy for Maggie, and of a weakening of her prejudice against her.

      "Hadn't we better be going, Auntie?" Maggie curtly and reproachfully suggested. "You know quite well that jam stands a good chance of being ruined."

      "I suppose we had," Auntie Hamps concurred with a sigh, and rose.

      "I shall be able to carry out my plan," thought Hilda, full of wisdom and triumph. And she saw Edwin, owner of the house, with his wild lithographic project scotched. And the realisation of her own sagacity thus exercised on behalf of those she loved, made her glad.

      At the same moment, just as Albert was recommencing his flow, the door opened and Edwin entered. He had glimpsed the children in the garden and had come into the house by the back way. There were cries of stupefaction and bliss. Both Albert and Clara were unmistakably startled and flattered. Indeed, several seconds elapsed before Albert could assume the proper grim, casual air. Auntie Hamps rejoiced and sat down again. Maggie disclosed no feeling, and she would not sit down again. Hilda had a serious qualm. She was obliged to persuade herself that in opening the negotiations for the house she had not committed an enormity. She felt less sagacious and less dominant. Who could have dreamt that Edwin would pop in just then? It was notorious, it was even a subject of complaint, that he never popped in. In reply to enquiries he stammered in his customary hesitating way that he happened to be in the neighbourhood on business and that it had occurred to him, etc., etc. In short, there he was.

      "Aren't you coming, Auntie?" Maggie demanded.

      "Let me have a look at Edwin, child," said Auntie Hamps, somewhat nettled. "How set you are!"

      "Then I shall go alone," said Maggie.

      "Yes. But what about this house business?" Albert tried to stop her.

      He could not stop her. Finance, houses, rents, were not real to her. She owned but did not possess such things. But the endangered jam was real to her. She did not own it, but she possessed it. She departed.

      "What's amiss with her to-day?" murmured Mrs. Hamps. "I must go too, or I shall be catching it; my word I shall!"

      "What house business?" Edwin asked.

      "Well," said Albert. "I like that! Aren't you trying to buy her house from her? We've just been talking it over."

      Edwin glanced swiftly at Hilda, and Hilda knew from the peculiar constrained, almost shamefaced, expression on his features, that he was extremely annoyed. He gave a little nervous laugh.