and circumstances were dull, cheap, pleasureless, and

empty. Work girls, shop assistants and so forth, the
class that have neither the happy-go-lucky freedom of the

poor nor the leisured freedom of the rich, came specially
within the range of her sympathy. It was sad to think

that there were young people who, after a long day's
work, had to sit alone in chill, dreary bedrooms because

they could not afford the price of a cup of coffee and a
sandwich in a restaurant, still less a shilling for a

theatre gallery.
Jocantha's mind was still dwelling on this theme

when she started forth on an afternoon campaign of
desultory shopping; it would be rather a comforting

thing, she told herself, if she could do something, on
the spur of the moment, to bring a gleam of pleasure and

interest into the life of even one or two wistful-
hearted, empty-pocketed workers; it would add a good deal

to her sense of enjoyment at the theatre that night. She
would get two upper circle tickets for a popular play,

make her way into some cheap tea-shop, and present the
tickets to the first couple of interesting work girls

with whom she could casually drop into conversation. She
could explain matters by saying that she was unable to

use the tickets herself and did not want them to be
wasted, and, on the other hand, did not want the trouble

of sending them back. On further reflection she decided
that it might be better to get only one ticket and give

it to some lonely-looking girl sitting eating her frugal
meal by herself; the girl might scrapeacquaintance with

her next-seat neighbour at the theatre and lay the
foundations of a lasting friendship.

With the Fairy Godmother impulse strong upon her,
Jocantha marched into a ticket agency and selected with

immense care an upper circle seat for the "Yellow
Peacock," a play that was attracting a considerable

amount of discussion and criticism. Then she went forth
in search of a tea-shop and philanthropic adventure, at

about the same time that Attab sauntered into the garden
with a mind attuned to sparrow stalking. In a corner of

an A.B.C. shop she found an unoccupied table, whereat she
promptly installed herself, impelled by the fact that at

the next table was sitting a young girl, rather plain of
feature, with tired, listless eyes, and a general air of

uncomplaining forlornness. Her dress was of poor
material, but aimed at being in the fashion, her hair was

pretty, and her complexion bad; she was finishing a
modest meal of tea and scone, and she was not very

different in her way from thousands of other girls who
were finishing, or beginning, or continuing their teas in

London tea-shops at that exact moment. The odds were
enormously in favour of the supposition that she had

never seen the "Yellow Peacock"; obviously she supplied
excellent material for Jocantha's first experiment in

haphazard benefaction.
Jocantha ordered some tea and a muffin, and then

turned a friendly scrutiny on her neighbour with a view
to catching her eye. At that precise moment the girl's

face lit up with sudden pleasure, her eyes sparkled, a
flush came into her cheeks, and she looked almost pretty.

A young man, whom she greeted with an affectionate
"Hullo, Bertie," came up to her table and took his seat

in a chair facing her. Jocantha looked hard at the new-
comer; he was in appearance a few years younger than

herself, very much better looking than Gregory, rather
better looking, in fact, than any of the young men of her

set. She guessed him to be a well-mannered young clerk
in some wholesalewarehouse, existing and amusing himself

as best he might on a tiny salary, and commanding a
holiday of about two weeks in the year. He was aware, of

course, of his good looks, but with the shy self-
consciousness of the Anglo-Saxon, not the blatant

complacency of the Latin or Semite. He was obviously on
terms of friendly intimacy with the girl he was talking

to, probably they were drifting towards a formal
engagement. Jocantha pictured the boy's home, in a

rather narrow circle, with a tiresome mother who always
wanted to know how and where he spent his evenings. He

would exchange that humdrum thraldom in due course for a
home of his own, dominated by a chronicscarcity of

pounds, shillings, and pence, and a dearth of most of the
things that made life attractive or comfortable.

Jocantha felt extremely sorry for him. She wondered if
he had seen the "Yellow Peacock"; the odds were

enormously in favour of the supposition that he had not.
The girl had finished her tea and would shortly be going

back to her work; when the boy was alone it would be
quite easy for Jocantha to say: "My husband has made

other arrangements for me this evening; would you care to
make use of this ticket, which would otherwise be

wasted?" Then she could come there again one afternoon
for tea, and, if she saw him, ask him how he liked the

play. If he was a nice boy and improved on acquaintance
he could be given more theatre tickets, and perhaps asked

to come one Sunday to tea at Chelsea. Jocantha made up
her mind that he would improve on acquaintance, and that

Gregory would like him, and that the Fairy Godmother
business would prove far more entertaining than she had

originally anticipated. The boy was distinctly
presentable; he knew how to brush his hair, which was

possibly an imitative faculty; he knew what colour of tie
suited him, which might be intuition; he was exactly the

type that Jocantha admired, which of course was accident.
Altogether she was rather pleased when the girl looked at

the clock and bade a friendly but hurriedfarewell to her
companion. Bertie nodded "good-bye," gulped down a

mouthful of tea, and then produced from his overcoat
pocket a paper-covered book, bearing the title "Sepoy and

Sahib, a tale of the great Mutiny."
The laws of tea-shop etiquetteforbid that you

should offer theatre tickets to a stranger without having
first caught the stranger's eye. It is even better if

you can ask to have a sugar basin passed to you, having
previously concealed the fact that you have a large and

well-filled sugar basin on your own table; this is not
difficult to manage, as the printed menu is generally

nearly as large as the table, and can be made to stand on
end. Jocantha set to work hopefully; she had a long and

rather high-pitched discussion with the waitress
concerning alleged defects in an altogether blameless

muffin, she made loud and plaintive inquiries about the
tube service to some impossibly remotesuburb, she talked

with brilliant insincerity to the tea-shop kitten, and as
a last resort she upset a milk-jug and swore at it

daintily. Altogether she attracted a good deal of
attention, but never for a moment did she attract the

attention of the boy with the beautifully-brushed hair,
who was some thousands of miles away in the baking plains