was
still pondering over the phenomenon when her mother followed her
through the little yard paved with round flints bedded in mortar--all
except the flower-beds, which were in this case marigold-beds and
fuschia-beds and tamarisk-shakedowns--and the street door which always
stood open, and it was very little use ringing, the bell being broken.
But you could pass through, and there would always be old Mr. Lobjoit
in the kitchen, even if Mrs. Lobjoit was not there herself.

"Why not look on the boxes, you stupid kitten? There's a name on them,
or ought to be." Thus Rosalind, after facts told.

"What a thing it is to have a practical maternal parent!" Thus Sally.
And Mrs. Lobjoit put on record with an amiable smile that that is what
she kept saying to Miss Nightingale, "Why not look?" Whereas the fact
is Mrs. Lobjoit never said anything of the sort.

"Here's a go!" says Sally, who gets at the label-side of the trunk
first. "If it isn't Tishy!" And the mother and daughter look at each
other's faces, each watching the other's theory forming of what this
sudden apparition means.

"What do you think, mother?"

"What do _you_ think, kitten?" But the truth is, both wanted time
to know what to think. And they hadn't got much forwarder with the
solution of the problem when a light was thrown upon it by the sudden
apparition of Laetitia herself, accompanied by the young gentleman
whom Sally did not scruple to speak of--but not in his presence--as
her counter-jumper. She did this, she said, to "pay Tishy out" for
what she had said about him before she made his acquaintance.

The couple were in a mixed state of exaltation and confusion--Tishy
half laughing, a third crying, and a sixth keeping up her dignity.
Both were saying might they come in, and doing it without waiting for
an answer.

Rosalind's remark was one of those nonsequences often met with in real
life: "There's enough lunch--or we can send out." Sally's was: "But
are you the Julius Bradshaws, or are you not? That's what _I_ want to
know." Sally won't be trifled with, not she!

"Well, Sally dear, no,--we're not--not just yet." Tishy hesitates.
Julius shows firmness.

"But we want to be at two o'clock this afternoon, if you'll come...."

"Both of us?"

"Why--of course, both of you."

"Then Mrs. Lobjoit will have to be in time with lunch." It does not
really matter who were the speakers, nor what the share of each was
in the following aggregate:

"How did