A MEETING AT ROSE COTTAGE It had not taken Sara very long to cut a niche for herself in the household at Sunnyside.

In a dwelling where the master of the house was away the greater part of the day, the mistress a chronic invalid, and the daughter a beautiful young thing whose mind was intent upon "colour" and "atmosphere," and altogether hazy concerning the practical necessities of housekeeping, the advent of any one possessing even half Sara's intelligent efficiency would have been provocative of many reforms.
Dick Selwyn, pushed to the uttermost limits of his strength by the demands of his wide practice and by the nervous strain of combating his wife's incessant fretfulness, quickly learned to turn to Sara for that sympathetic understanding which had hitherto been denied him in his home-life.
He had, of course, never again discussed with her his wife's incurable self-absorption, as on the day of her arrival, when the painful scene created by Mrs.Selwyn had practically forced him into some sort of explanation, but Sara's quick grasp of the situation had infinitely simplified matters, and by devoting a considerable amount of her own time to the entertainment of the captious invalid, and thus keeping her in a good humour, she contrived to save Selwyn many a bad half-hour of recrimination and complaint.
Sara was essentially a good "comrade," as Patrick Lovell had recognized in the old days at Barrow Court, and instinctively Selwyn came to share with her the pin-prick worries that dog a man's footsteps in this vale of woe, learning to laugh at them; and even his apprehensions concerning Molly's ultimate development and welfare were lessened by the knowledge that Sara was at hand.
Molly herself seemed to float through life like a big, beautiful moth, sailing serenely along, and now and then blundering into things, but never learning by experience the dangers of such blunders.

One day, in the course of her inconsequent path through life, she would probably flutter too near the attractive blaze of some perilous fire, just as a moth flies against the flame of a candle and singes its frail, soft wings in the process.
It was of this that Sara was inwardly afraid, realizing, perhaps more clearly than the girl's overworked and sometimes absent-minded father, the risks attaching to her temperament.
Of late, Molly had manifested a certain moodiness and irritability very unlike her usual facile sweetness of disposition, and Sara was somewhat nonplussed to account for it.

Finally, she approached the matter by way of a direct inquiry.
"What's wrong, Molly ?" Molly was hunched up in the biggest and shabbiest armchair by the fire, smoking innumerable cigarettes and flinging them away half-finished.

At Sara's question, she looked up with a shade of defiance in her eyes.
"Why should anything be wrong ?" she countered, obviously on the defensive.
"I don't know, I'm sure," responded Sara good-humouredly.