instance. Will she mind that?"

"It wasn't so much that I liked other people," said Mr. Sack, walking
about and thinking tumultuously aloud rather than addressing anybody,
"but that I liked other people so _much_."

"I see," said Anna-Felicitas, nodding. "You overdid it. Like over-eating
whipped cream. Only it wasn't you but Mrs. Sack who got the resulting
ache."

"And aren't I aching? Aren't I suffering?"

"Yes, but you did the over-eating," said Anna-Felicitas.

"The world," said the unhappy Mr. Sack, quickening his pace, "is so full
of charming and delightful people. Is one to shut one's eyes to them?"

"Of course not," said Anna-Felicitas. "One must love them."

"Yes, yes," said Mr. Sack. "Exactly. That's what I did."

"And though I wouldn't wish," said Anna-Felicitas, "to say anything
against somebody who so very nearly was my hostess, yet really, you
know, wasn't Mrs. Sack's attitude rather churlish?"

Mr. Sack gazed at her. "Oh, aren't you a pretty--" he began again,
with a kind of agonized enthusiasm; but he was again cut short by
Anna-Rose, on whom facts of a disturbing nature were beginning to press.

"Aunt Alice," she said, looking and feeling extremely perturbed as the
situation slowly grew clear to her, "told us we were never to stay with
people whose wives are somewhere else. Unless they have a mother or
other female relative living with them. She was most particular about
it, and said whatever else we did we weren't ever to do this. So I'm
afraid," she continued in her politest voice, determined to behave
beautifully under circumstances that were trying, "much as we should
have enjoyed staying with you and Mrs. Sack if she had been here to stay
with, seeing that she isn't we manifestly can't."

"You can't stay with me," murmured Mr. Sack, turning his bewildered eyes
to her. "Were you going to?"

"Of course we were going to. It's what we've come for," said
Anna-Felicitas.

"And I'm afraid," said-Anna-Rose, "disappointed as we are, unless you
can produce a mother--"

"But where on earth are we to go to, Anna-R.?" inquired Anna-Felicitas,
who, being lazy, having got to a place preferred if possible to stay in
it, and who besides was sure that in their forlorn situation a Sack in
the hand was worth two Sacks not in it, any day. Also she liked the look
of Mr. Sack, in spite of his being so obviously out of repair. He badly
wanted doing up she said to herself, but on the other hand he seemed to