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breaking-up; but at present he was holding office for the first time in his life, and it was no sinecure. And he felt rather as if he were in for a bout of Coast fever.

The voyage over, Pamela and Miss Sidmouth spent four or five weeks in New York. They stayed at a boarding-house, but Miss Sidmouth spent almost every day with a large, middle-aged family of cousins, all very voluble and immersed in their own concerns and each other. Pamela, after two or three visits, mostly elected to stay at the boarding-house by herself. She could not fit in with that noisy, elderly party, and besides she felt that they must naturally prefer to have their English cousin to themselves.

“I’m afraid it’s very dull for you, my dear,” Miss Sidmouth said occasionally. She was fond of Pamela (people mostly were) but she had no real need of her society, nor was she a specially considerate person. She had lived alone for twenty years, and did not realise how the child was pining for someone young and gay—someone who would laugh at all the queer little things that Miss Sidmouth never noticed, and would not have considered funny if she had—someone who cared for books and liked talking of beautiful things, or was purely frivolous with the irresponsible joy of youth—someone, in short, who belonged to the life she had left.

She spent hours sitting in her own room gazing out at the passers-by, or bending over the endless crewel-work which Miss Sidmouth liked to begin and usually left to Pamela to finish. She pricked her fingers unmercifully with the thick needles—she was not a very experienced needlewoman and had never done anything but the daintiest work—she hated with all her soul the brilliant blues and yellows in which Miss Sidmouth delighted; and there was nobody to speak to, and New York was a very big and very lonely place.