were uncommonly well-informed and agreeable young women, when
you came to know them--and quite lady-like, too, for all that in our
topsy-turvy days these girls had to work for their living. Unthinkable
as it seemed, the colonel found that his night-nurse, a Miss Ramsay, was
actually by birth a Ramsay of Blenheim; and for a little the discovery
depressed him. But to be made much of, upon whatever terms, was always
treatment to which the colonel submitted only too docilely. And,
besides, in this queer, comfortable, just half-waking state, the
colonel found one had the drollest dreams, evolving fancies such as were
really a credit to one's imagination....

For instance, one very often imagined that Patricia was more close at
hand nowadays.... No, she was not here in the room, of course, but
outside, in the street, at the corner below, where the letterbox stood.
Yes, she was undoubtedly there, the colonel reflected drowsily. And they
had been so certain her return could only result in unhappiness, and
they were so wise, that whilst she waited for her opportunity Patricia
herself began to be a little uneasy. She had patrolled the block six
times before the chance came.

And it seemed to Rudolph Musgrave, drowsily pleased by his own
inventiveness, that Patricia was glad this afternoon was so hot that no
one was abroad except the small boy at the corner house, who sat upon
the bottom porch-step, and, as children so often do, appeared intently
to appraise the world at large with an inexplicable air of
disappointment.

"Now think how Rudolph would feel,"--the colonel whimsically played at
reading Patricia's reflection--"if I were to be arrested as a suspicious
character--that's what the newspapers always call them, I think--on his
very doorstep! And he must have been home a half-hour ago at least,
because I know it's after five. But the side-gate's latched, and I can't
ring the door-bell--if only because it would be too ridiculous to have
to ask the maid to tell Colonel Musgrave his wife wanted to see him.
Besides, I don't know the new house-girl. I wish now we hadn't let old
Mary go, even though she was so undependable about thorough-cleaning."

And it seemed to Rudolph Musgrave that Patricia was tired of pacing
before the row of houses, each so like the other, and compared herself
to Gulliver astray upon a Brobdingnagian bookshelf which held a "library
set" of some huge author. She had lost interest, too, in the new house