She's giving her youth--for, alas! when I was young there were domestic circumstances--" she sighed, and stopped short.
Mr.Clacton hastily reverted to the joke about luncheon, and explained how Mrs.Seal fed on a bag of biscuits under the trees, whatever the weather might be, rather, Katharine thought, as though Mrs.Seal were a pet dog who had convenient tricks.
"Yes, I took my little bag into the square," said Mrs.Seal, with the self-conscious guilt of a child owning some fault to its elders.

"It was really very sustaining, and the bare boughs against the sky do one so much GOOD.

But I shall have to give up going into the square," she proceeded, wrinkling her forehead.

"The injustice of it! Why should I have a beautiful square all to myself, when poor women who need rest have nowhere at all to sit ?" She looked fiercely at Katharine, giving her short locks a little shake.

"It's dreadful what a tyrant one still is, in spite of all one's efforts.