Hilda resisted; she had found a volume in the library which immensely interested her.
"What ARE you reading, Miss Wade ?" Lady Meadowcroft cried at last, quite savagely.

It made her angry to see anybody else pleased and occupied when she herself was listless.
"A delightful book!" Hilda answered.

"The Buddhist Praying Wheel, by William Simpson." Lady Meadowcroft took it from her and turned the pages over with a languid air.

"Looks awfully dull!" she observed, with a faint smile, at last, returning it.
"It's charming," Hilda retorted, glancing at one of the illustrations.
"It explains so much.

It shows one why one turns round one's chair at cards for luck; and why, when a church is consecrated, the bishop walks three times about it sunwise." "Our Bishop is a dreadfully prosy old gentleman," Lady Meadowcroft answered, gliding off at a tangent on a personality, as is the wont of her kind; "he had, oh, such a dreadful quarrel with my father over the rules of the St.Alphege Schools at Millington." "Indeed," Hilda answered, turning once more to her book.