the weather is
cold," says Mabel, lifting a lovely little face to his and bringing her
chair down on the top of his toe. "She says it keeps her warm, too. Are
you warm now?" anxiously.

"Yes, yes--burning!" says Mr. Dysart, whose toe is not unconscious of a
corn.

"Ah! I knew you'd like it," says. Tommy. "Now go on; give us our
rice--a little rice and a lot of jam."

"Is that what your mother does, too?" asks Mr. Dysart, meanly it must be
confessed, but his toe is very bad still. The silence that follows his
question and the look of the two downcast little faces is, however,
punishment enough.

"Well, so be it," says he. "But even if we do finish the jam--I'm
awfully fond of it myself--we must promise faithfully not to be
disagreeable about it; not to be ill, that is----"

"Ill! We're never ill," says Tommy, valiantly, whereupon they make an
end of the jam in no time.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

"'Tis said the rose is Love's own flower,
Its blush so bright--its thorns so many."

There is no mistake in the joy with which Felix parts from his
companions after luncheon. He breathes afresh as he sees them tearing up
the staircase to get ready for their afternoon walk, nurse puffing and
panting behind them.

The drawing-room seems a bower of repose after the turmoil of the late
feast, and besides, it cannot be long now before she--they--return. That
is if they--she--return at all! He has, indeed, ample time given him to
imagine this last horrible possibility as not only a probability, but a
certainty, before the sound of coming footsteps up the stairs and the
frou-frou of pretty frocks tells him his doubts were harmless.
Involuntarily he rises from his chair and straightens himself, out of
the rather forlorn position into which he has fallen, and fixes his eyes
immovably upon the door. Are there two of them?

That is beyond doubt. It is only mad people who chatter to themselves,
and certainly Mrs. Monkton is not mad.

Barbara has indeed raised her voice a little more than ordinary, and has
addressed Joyce by her name on her hurried way up the staircase and
across the cushioned recess outside the door. Now she throws open the
door and enters, radiant, if a little nervous.

"Here we are," she says, very pleasantly, and with all the put-on manner
of one who has made up her mind to be extremely joyous under distinct
difficulties. "You are still here, then, and alone. They didn't murder
you. Joyce and I h