"Yes, I am. Why not? It's high time, speakin' of values, that young Posy should know just what she cost us. I say it's part of her education, the part she couldn't learn at school. She's eighteen. She knows, I take it, that she didn't drop from heaven into the middle of a gooseberry bush?"

At this Susan, not Posy, blushed. It was the girl who said, calmly:

"You are quite right, father. I ought to know what I've cost both of you." She looked at her mother tenderly, and spoke in a softer voice: "Is it true that you nearly died?"

"Yes."

"And so did I," said Quinney.

Posy's eyes filled with tears.

"I shall always remember that," she murmured.

CHAPTER XVI

A BUSINESS PROPOSITION

I