Tochatti's wounded feelings that I had to banish the poor child. It
seems that one day last week, while out walking with Tochatti, Cherry
noticed a house in the village with all its blinds down; and on
inquiring the reason Tochatti informed her that someone was dead in the
house; further entering, so I gather, into full details as to the manner
in which Catholics decorate the death-chamber."

"Oh?" Anstice looked rather blank. "But I don't see----"

"Well, it seems the idea fired Cherry's imagination; and this morning,
when Tochatti returned from High Mass about noon, she found the blinds
pulled down in all the front windows of the house!"

"The little monkey!" Sir Richard laughed. "I'll wager the woman got a
fright!"

"She certainly did, and matters were not improved by Cherry coming to
meet her with her face quite wet with tears--you know Cherry is a born
actress--and begging her, between sobs, to come upstairs softly as
someone was dead!"

"Someone? She did not specify who it was?"

"No--or if she did Tochatti did not understand; but when she got into
the nursery she found an elaborately conceived representation of a
Catholic death-bed--flowers, bits of candle, and so on; and Cherry's
very biggest doll--the one you gave her, by the way, Dr.
Anstice--enacting the part of the corpse!"

Even Anstice's mood was not proof against the humour of the small
child's pantomime; and both he and Sir Richard laughed heartily.

"And Tochatti took it amiss?" Sir Richard put the question amid his
laughter.

"Yes. It seems she had really had a bad fright; and on finding Cherry in
tears she never doubted that some tragedy had occurred!"

"So you had to punish the poor mite for her realism!"

"Yes. Tochatti waited for me to return--I was out motoring--and then
hauled the culprit before me; and although I really didn't see much harm
in poor little Cherry's joke I was obliged, in order to pacify Tochatti,
to sentence her to go to bed early--a special punishment on Sunday,
when, as a rule, she sits up quite late!"

"I almost wonder," said Anstice slowly, "that Tochatti, devoted as she
is to Cherry, could bring herself to give the child away. One would have
expected her to hush up any small misdeeds, not dwell upon them to the
powers that be."

Chloe looked at him with a hint of cynicism in her eyes.

"Even Tochatti is human," she said, "and when one has had a fright one's
natural impulse, on being reassured, is to scold