When a girl has been keeping house for her father for three or four years and her father then (although sixty-three) marries again, her position is not easy, nor does it demand a blind belief in all the malignant tradition that surrounds stepmothers to admit this. As a matter of fact, Colonel Staveley's new wife would probably have been happier if her stepdaughter had remained in the house. Indeed, I am sure of it, for she is neither a jealous woman nor a meddlesome; and Ben's knowledge of her home and of its master's ways would have made life more simple, while the girl herself would have been a companion when that master was playing bridge at his club or informing such of his fellow-members as would still listen to him what the Government—if it had a grain of sense—would do.

For some time—we are now in the year 1921—Ben and her father had had the house to themselves, for her mother was dead. This lady, I ought to say, had displayed something like genius in the ordered way in which at definite intervals, and with discreet alternations of sex, she had put her children into the world; first a girl and then a boy, and then a girl and then a boy, and so on—beginning with Alicia as long ago as 1883, and then Cecil in 1887, and then Merrill in 1890, and then Guy in 1894, until her youngest daughter's turn to arrive came in 1899, and Toby's, her youngest son's in 1902, and the tale was complete.

Of these six, when Colonel Staveley married again, only Ben was at home. Alicia had become Mrs. Bertrand Lyle and the mother of two boys and was now a widow; Cecil, who was a soldier in India, had married a French girl and was childless; Merrill had married a Hampshire vicar and was childless; Guy, also a soldier in India, was engaged to Melanie Ames, a friend of Ben's; and as for Toby, he was nominally imbibing learning at Oxford, but, like so many undergraduates of my acquaintance, seemed more often to be imbibing other things in London. I don't mean to excess, but dancing is a thirsty form of industry, and late hours have been known to lead to early restoratives.

Ever since Mrs. Staveley's death, the Colonel had counted on Ben, who was then eighteen, for everything that would promote his comfort. He knew—none better—that the first essential of a selfish man is an entourage of unselfish people. And of these Ben was the chief. It must not be thought that the Colonel was a bully; rather, a martinet. He suffered from a too early retirement, aggravated by his wife's meekness and complacency, and as he had not thrown himself into any amateur work, and was, by nature, indolent and conversational, he was left with far too much leisure in which to detect domestic blemishes. A pedant for routine, his eye, when it came to any kind of disorder or novelty of arrangement, was like a gun. There was one place and one only for every article in the house, beginning with the hat-stand in the hall; and his first instinct, if not thought, on entering his front door was to look for something out of position. And so onwards, through whatever rooms he passed.

When he descried a fault it was, formerly, his wife, and latterly Ben, who was court-martialled; and not the actual offender. This probably, while fortunate for that person, was even more fortunate for the Colonel, who might otherwise have been without cooks and parlourmaids most of his life, for servants often put up a better resistance to martinets than the martinets' own flesh and blood. But whereas Mrs. Staveley had been reduced too often to tears, Ben bore the assaults with a courageous or stoical humour.

"I can't conceive," the Colonel had exclaimed wrathfully, on the very day before this story begins, "why on earth people can't leave my umbrella alone."

"But it's there all right," Ben replied. "I noticed it in the stand a few minutes ago."

"Yes," he snapped, "but some idiot has rolled it up. That new girl, I suppose. I thought she looked an officious fool the moment I saw her."

"Well, father," said Ben, "if she did roll it up, it was purely through excess of zeal, that's all; and don't let us be too hard on excess of zeal in these times, when almost everyone is so slack."

"But what about her being too hard on my umbrella?" the Colonel demanded. "That's what I complain of. If I leave it unrolled—which I did very carefully and on purpose—it's no business of anyone else to roll it up. And no woman can roll an umbrella, anyway. It's an art."

"All right, father," said Ben, "it shan't happen again."

"I hope not," the Colonel barked back, "and it wouldn't have happened this time if you'd kept Atkinson. I can't think why you let her go."

"My dear father," said Ben, "I've told you again and again. She left in order to be married. Surely a girl must be allowed to marry if she wants."

"Pooh!" said the Colonel, with infinite scorn. "Marriage!"

It was on the next day that he announced his own engagement, through which Ben was driven to come to a decision as to her career.

---