abre went
to sleep in another room,--and the arrangement prevailed. Nothing was
said between them on the matter, one way or the other. They naturally
occupied different rooms during her illness. She recovered. They
continued to occupy different rooms. It was the most natural business in
the world.

The sole reference to recognition of permanency in this development of
the relations between them was made when Sabre, on the first Saturday
afternoon after Mabel's recovery--he did not go to his office at
Tidborough on Saturdays--carried out his idea, conceived during her
sickness, of making the bedroom into which he had moved serve as his
study also. He had never got rid of his distaste for his "den." He had
never felt quite comfortable there.

At lunch on this Saturday, "I tell you what I'm going to do this
afternoon," he said. "I'm going to move my books up into my room."

He had been a little afraid the den business would be reopened by this
intention, but Mabel's only reply was, "You'd better have the maids help
you."

"Yes, I'll get them."

"No, I'll give the order, if you don't mind."

"Right!"

And in the afternoon the books were moved, the den raped of them, his
bedroom awarded them. High Jinks and Low Jinks rather enjoyed it,
passing up and down the stairs with continuous smirks at this new
manifestation of the master's ways. The bookshelves proved rather a
business. There were four of them, narrow and high. "We'll carry these
longways," Sabre directed, when the first one was tackled. "I'll shove
it over. You two take the top, and I'll carry the foot."

In this order they struggled up the stairs, High Jinks and Low Jinks
backwards, and the smirks enlarged into panting giggles. Halfway up came
a loud crack.

"What the devil's that?" said Sabre, sweating and gasping.

"I think it's the back of my dress, sir," said High Jinks.

"Good lord!" (Convulsive giggles.) "You know, Low, you're practically
sitting on the dashed thing. You've twisted yourself round in some
extraordinary way--"

Agonising giggles.

Mabel appeared in the hail beneath. "Raise it up, Rebecca. Raise it,
Sarah. How can you expect to move, stooping like that?"

They raised it to the level of their waists, and progression became
seemly.

"There you are!" said Sabre.

There was somehow a feeling at both ends of the bookcase of having been
caught.

II

Sabre liked this room. Three latticed windows, in the same wall, looked
on