kitchen door was closed when he came up with the children,
and they had not left him.

"Dinner won't be ready for another ten minutes," she said, in her slow
drawl. "Won't you have an egg beaten up in a glass of milk while you're
waiting?"

There was a look of concern on her face which made Philip uncomfortable.
He forced a laugh and answered that he was not at all hungry. Sally came
in to lay the table, and Philip began to chaff her. It was the family joke
that she would be as fat as an aunt of Mrs. Athelny, called Aunt
Elizabeth, whom the children had never seen but regarded as the type of
obscene corpulence.

"I say, what HAS happened since I saw you last, Sally?" Philip began.

"Nothing that I know of."

"I believe you've been putting on weight."

"I'm sure you haven't," she retorted. "You're a perfect skeleton."

Philip reddened.

"That's a tu quoque, Sally," cried her father. "You will be fined one
golden hair of your head. Jane, fetch the shears."

"Well, he is thin, father," remonstrated Sally. "He's just skin and bone."

"That's not the question, child. He is at perfect liberty to be thin, but
your obesity is contrary to decorum."

As he spoke he put his arm proudly round her waist and looked at her with
admiring eyes.

"Let me get on with the table, father. If I am comfortable there are some
who don't seem to mind it."

"The hussy!" cried Athelny, with a dramatic wave of the hand. "She taunts
me with the notorious fact that Joseph, a son of Levi who sells jewels in
Holborn, has made her an offer of marriage."

"Have you accepted him, Sally?" asked Philip.

"Don't you know father better than that by this time? There's not a word
of truth in it."

"Well, if he hasn't made you an offer of marriage," cried Athelny, "by
Saint George and Merry England, I will seize him by the nose and demand of
him immediately what are his intentions."

"Sit down, father, dinner's ready. Now then, you children, get along with
you and wash your hands all of you, and don't shirk it, because I mean to
look at them before you have a scrap of dinner, so there."

Philip thought he was ravenous till he began to eat, but then discovered
that his stomach turned against food, and he could eat hardly at all. His
brain was weary; and he did not notice that Athelny, contrary to his
habit, spoke very little. Philip was relieved to be sitting in a
comfortable house, but every now and then he could not prevent himself
from gl