This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1919. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... "People do like us," mused Miriam, listening to the peculiar sympathy of the family voice. Meg was there, away from her own home, happy with them, the front door shut, their garden and house all round her and her strange luggage upstairs in one of the spare rooms. Nice Meg. . . . 9 After breakfast the next morning Miriam sat in a low carpet chair at a window in the long bedroom she shared with Harriett. It was a morning of blazing sunlight and bright blue. She had just come up through the cool house from a rose-gathering tour of the garden with Harriett. A little bunch of pink anemones she had picked for herself were set in a tumbler on the wash-handstand. She had left the door open to hear coming faintly up from the far-away drawing-room the tap-tap of hammering that told her Sarah and Eve were stretching the drugget. On her knee lay her father's cigarette-making machine and a parcel of papers and tobacco. An empty cigarette tin stood upon the window-sill. She began packing tobacco into the groove of the machine, distributing and pressing it lightly with the tips of her fingers, watching as she worked the heavy pink cups of the anemones and the shining of their green stalks through the water. They were, she reflected, a little too much out. In the sun they would have come out still more. They would close up at night unless the rooms grew very hot. Slipping the paper evenly into the slot she shut the machine and turned the roller. As the sound of the loosely working cogs came up to her she revolted from her self-imposed task. She was too happy to make cigarettes. It would use up her happiness too stupidly. She was surprised by a sudden suggestion that she should smoke the single cigarette herself. Why not? Why had she never yet smoked one? She glanced at the slo...