going on
well."

Gwen hesitated. "I wish she looked a little--thicker," said she.

Dr. Nash looked serious. "We mustn't be in too great a hurry. Remember
her age, and the fact that she is eating almost nothing. She won't take
regular meals again--or what she calls regular meals--till the tension
of this excitement subsides...."

Said Adrian:--"It's perfectly extraordinary to me, not seeing her, to
hear her talk as she does. Because it doesn't give the impression of
such weakness as that. Her hands feel very thin, of course."

Said the doctor:--"I wish I could get her to take some stimulant; then
she would begin eating again. If she could only be slightly intoxicated!
But she's very obdurate on that point--I told you?--and refuses even Sir
Cropton Fuller's old tawny port. I talked about her to him, and he sent
me half a dozen the same evening. A good-natured old chap!--wants to
make everyone else as dyspeptic as himself...."

"That reminds me!" said Gwen. "We forgot the champagne."

"No, we didn't," said Irene. "It was put in the carriage, I know. In a
basket. Two bottles lying down. And it was taken out, because I saw it."

"But _was_ it put in the railway carriage?"

"I meant the railway carriage."

"I believe it's in the old Noah's Ark we came here in, all the while."

Granny Marrable said:--"I am sure there has nothing been brought into
the Cottage. Because we should have seen. There is only the door
through, to go in and out."

"You see, Dr. Nash," said Gwen, "when you said that in your letter,
about her wanting stimulant, champagne immediately occurred to Sir
Hamilton. So we brought a couple of bottles of the King of Prussia's
favourite Clicquot, and a little screwy thing to milk the bottles with,
like a cow, a glass at a time. Miss Torrens and I are quite agreed that
very often one can get quite pleasantly and healthily drunk on champagne
when other intoxicants only give one a headache and make one ill. Isn't
it so, 'Re?" Miss Torrens and her brother both testified that this was
their experience, and Dr. Nash assented, saying that there would at
least be no harm in trying the experiment.

As for dear old Granny Marrable, her opinion was simply that whatever
her ladyship from the Towers, and the young lady from Pensham and her
brother, were agreed upon, was beyond question right; and even if
medical sanction had not been forthcoming she would have supported them.
"I am sure," said she, "my dear sister