itched and he ground his teeth together. Mary looked gravely
at him for a moment, and then she put her hands to her face, and Darnell
could see that she also shook with merriment.

'I am as bad as you,' she said, at last. 'I never thought of it in that
way. I'm glad I didn't, or I should have laughed in Aunt Marian's face,
and I wouldn't have done that for the world. Poor old thing; she cried
as if her heart would break. I met her at Victoria, as she asked me, and
we had some soup at a confectioner's. I could scarcely touch it; her
tears kept dropping into the plate all the time; and then we went to the
waiting-room at the station, and she cried there terribly.'

'Well,' said Darnell, 'what happened next? I won't laugh any more.'

'No, we mustn't; it's much too horrible for a joke. Well, of course aunt
went home and wondered and wondered what could be the matter, and tried
to think it out, but, as she says, she could make nothing of it. She
began to be afraid that uncle's brain was giving way through overwork,
as he had stopped in the City (as he said) up to all hours lately, and
he had to go to Yorkshire (wicked old story-teller!), about some very
tiresome business connected with his leases. But then she reflected that
however queer he might be getting, even his queerness couldn't make
whistles in the air, though, as she said, he was always a wonderful man.
So she had to give that up; and then she wondered if there were anything
the matter with her, as she had read about people who heard noises when
there was really nothing at all. But that wouldn't do either, because
though it might account for the whistling, it wouldn't account for the
dandelion or the Sandpiper, or for fainting fits that turned purple, or
any of uncle's queerness. So aunt said she could think of nothing but to
read the Bible every day from the beginning, and by the time she got
into Chronicles she felt rather better, especially as nothing had
happened for three or four Sundays. She noticed uncle seemed
absent-minded, and not as nice to her as he might be, but she put that
down to too much work, as he never came home before the last train, and
had a hansom twice all the way, getting there between three and four in
the morning. Still, she felt it was no good bothering her head over what
couldn't be made out or explained anyway, and she was just settling
down, when one Sunday evening it began all over again, and worse things
happened. The whistling fo