There is nothing like a meal, especially a good meal, for inducing between two people an agreeable sense of intimacy.

When Enid Crofton and her elderly sister-in-law passed from the dining-room of The Trellis House into the gay-looking little sitting-room, with its old-fashioned, brightly coloured chintz furnishings, and quaint reproductions of eighteenth-century prints, the two ladies were far more at ease the one with the other than before luncheon.
Enid, in the plain black woollen gown, with its white linen collar and cuffs, which she had discarded almost at once after her husband's funeral, felt that she was producing a pleasant impression.

As they sat down, one on each side of the cheerful little wood fire, and began sipping the excellent coffee which the mistress of the house had already taught her very plain cook to make as it should be made, she suddenly exclaimed:-- "I do want to thank you again for the money you sent me when poor Cecil died! It was most awfully good of you, and very useful, too, for the insurance people did not pay me for nearly a month." These words gave her visitor an opening for which she had waited during the last hour: "I'm glad my present was so opportune," said Miss Crofton in her precise, old-fashioned way.

"As we have mentioned money, I should like to know, my dear, how you are situated?
I was afraid from something Cecil told me last time he and I met that you would be very poorly left." She stopped speaking, and there followed a long pause.

Enid Crofton was instinctively glad that she was seated with her back to the window.