I am not going to have Mrs. Blake go home and say you
are the worst behaved children she ever met in her life. You will stay,
Joyce?" anxiously to her sister.

"Oh, I suppose so. I couldn't leave you to endure their tender mercies
alone."

"That's a darling girl! You know I never can get on with that odious
woman. Ah! how d'ye do, Mrs. Blake? How sweet of you to come after last
night's fatigue."

"Well, I think a drive a capital thing after being up all night," says
the new-comer, a fat, little, ill-natured woman, nestling herself into
the cosiest chair in the room. "I hadn't quite meant to come here, but I
met Mr. Browne and Mr. Courtenay, so I thought we might as well join
forces, and storm you in good earnest. Mr. Browne has just been telling
me that Lady Swansdown left the Court this morning. Got a telegram, she
said, summoning her to Gloucestershire. Never do believe in these sudden
telegrams myself. Stayed rather long in that anteroom with Lord
Baltimore last night."

"Didn't know she had been in any anteroom," says Mrs. Monkton, coldly.
"I daresay her mother-in-law is ill again. She has always been attentive
to her."

"Not on terms with her son, you know; so Lady Swansdown hopes, by the
attention you speak of, to come in for the old lady's private fortune.
Very considerable fortune, I've heard."

"Who told you?" asks Mr. Browne, with a cruelly lively curiosity. "Lady
Swansdown?"

"Oh, dear no!"

Pause! Dicky still looking expectant and Mrs. Blake uncomfortable. She
is racking her brain to try and find some person who might have told
her, but her brain fails her.

The pause threatens to be ghastly, when Tommy comes to the rescue.

He had been told off as we know to keep Mabel in a proper frame of mind,
but being in a militant mood has resented the task appointed him. He has
indeed so far given in to the powers that be that he has consented to
accept a picture book, and to show it to Mabel, who is looking at it
with him, lost in admiration of his remarkable powers of description.
Each picture indeed, is graphically explained by Tommy at the top of his
lungs, and in extreme bad humor.

He is lying on the rug, on his fat stomach, and is becoming quite a
martinet.

"Look at this!" he is saying now. "Look! do you hear, or I won't stay
and keep you good any longer. Here's a picture about a boat that's going
to be drowned down in the sea in one minnit. The name on it is"--reading
laboriously--"'All hands