| [CHAPTER I.] | “’Twas on a Monday Morning.” |
| [CHAPTER II.] | The First Meeting. |
| [CHAPTER III.] | Back in Familiar Haunts. |
| [CHAPTER IV.] | A Bitter Experience. |
| [CHAPTER V.] | Polly’s Culinary Difficulties. |
| [CHAPTER VI.] | The Young Lady Wentworth. |
| [CHAPTER VII.] | A Mild Request. |
| [CHAPTER VIII.] | Winning a Husband. |
| [CHAPTER IX.] | Beyond Reconciliation. |
| [CHAPTER X.] | A Wilful Woman. |
| [CHAPTER XI.] | The Boy’s Return. |
| [CHAPTER XII.] | A Terrible Destiny. |
| [CHAPTER XIII.] | Hoping Against Hope. |
| [CHAPTER XIV.] | The Portrait Painter. |
| [CHAPTER XV.] | A Rebuff. |
| [CHAPTER XVI.] | A Changed House. |
| [CHAPTER XVII.] | Drawing Together. |
| [CHAPTER XVIII.] | The Cause of Strife. |
| [CHAPTER XIX.] | The Tragedy on the Polo Grounds. |
| [CHAPTER XX.] | Christina’s Tricks. |
| [CHAPTER XXI.] | Her Sister’s Secret. |
| [CHAPTER XXII.] | A Definition of a Wife. |
| [CHAPTER XXIII.] | The Sympathy of the Waves. |
| [CHAPTER XXIV.] | At the Moment of Victory. |
CHAPTER I.
“’TWAS ON A MONDAY MORNING.”
Fractiousness was the keynote of the mental atmosphere in a certain substantial-looking South Kensington house on a certain Monday morning. Not that this bad-tempered atmosphere was peculiar to this one particular Monday by no means. As a rule, every living thing in the house, from the master down to the blind and asthmatic pug that lived under the kitchen table, started the working week in a mood that was detestable in an individual as well as collective sense.
And perhaps the worst offender of the lot was Mrs. Pennington.
Her hatred of Mondays had become traditional.
Seated at her well-worn writing table, surrounded by tradesmen’s books of every size, color and description, she was simply unapproachable.
On ordinary occasions gentle-voiced and sympathetic, the advent of Monday saw her transformed into a flushed, querulous, pugilistic person, whose whole attitude denoted war and hatred toward every washerwoman, every butcher, baker or greengrocer that ever had existed or ever would exist. Life in the Kensington household for at least three hours of the average Monday might be likened to the sensation of a train that had suddenly left the rails and was bumping along with a series of shocks, till either the steam was turned off in time or a catastrophe occurred.
That a catastrophe never had occurred is one of those everyday marvels with which we are hemmed about. Why, for instance, “cook”—a generic term which covered a multitude of persons—had never turned on her mistress and thrashed out the end of the “suet question” with fists instead of angry impertinence, was one of those problems which Polly, at least, had never been able to solve.
“You know,” she had said on more than one occasion to Winifred, up in the seclusion of their bedroom, “you know it would take so little to smash mother; she makes a lot of noise when she is cross, but she is such a small thing, anybody could bowl her over in a minute, and there would be an end of the argument!”
“I don’t think you ought to talk like that about mother,” Winifred said on one of these occasions. As a matter of fact, it happened to be the same Monday morning alluded to in the very commencement of this story.