s, thank you,' replies Philippa.

'I don't think you have,' says Teddy, who is as sharp as a needle,
'because, well, you don't look very happy now.'

'That is just it perhaps, I am so sorry it is over.'

'Oh,' and Teddy goes to the window only half convinced, 'there's that
canary,' he says, 'I watch him often and often, and never can see
nobody feeding it. I asked Marie to let me go and see if it had got some
seed; but she was cross and said I wasn't to--oh, Aunt Lippa, isn't it
hot?'

'It is rather, but it must be nearly tea-time, let us have some tea and
then go out.'

'Can't; Marie's gone to see her sister,' replies Teddy, trying to see
himself in the knob at the end of the bedstead.

'Perhaps mother will come; but really Teddy do get off my bed, you are
making it in such a mess,' and she rushes at him, seizing him in her
arms, 'oh, what a dreadful little nephew you are.'

'Let go, let go,' he cries, between struggling and laughing, and then
mischievously, 'You don't look half pretty now, you're quite red.
I'll--tell Mr Dal--'

'Mr who?' asks Lippa, putting him down.

'Sha'n't tell you,' he says, making for the door, but Philippa is too
quick for him, and placing her back against it, says in tones of mild
reproof,

'Do you know, it is very rude to make personal remarks.'

'Is it?' he asks, 'well you see it was only to Mr Dalrymple, and I've
known him for such a great many years, I met him yesterday, he was
walking the same way as me, and--you've got a hair-pin coming out, Aunt
Lippa.'

'Never mind that,' says she, adjusting the straying article, 'and--'

'Oh, him or I began, I don't 'xactly remember, but we talked about
pretty persons, and he said he was glad he wasn't a pretty person,
because they were nearly always nasty, and then I said they weren't,
'cos there's mother and you, and I said you're always pretty.'

'And what did he say?' asks Lippa.

'He said,' replies Teddy, in the gruffest voice he can assume, trying to
imitate Jimmy, '"More's the pity," and now you see I can just tell him
you don't look pretty a bit, when you're holding somebody in your arms.'

'You must not say anything of the kind,' says she; it would be useless
to exact a promise from him, probably be the way to make him repeat the
conversation word for word; but Philippa has found out what she wanted
to know, namely, that Jimmy is in London, and it causes her for the
moment exquisite pain, to feel that he is not so far awa