ry. So hungry that I hate
Shakespeare."

"But--"

"I know. You're going to say why not eat? It does seem simple. But
you've no idea how difficult it really is. I'm afraid my uncle and I
have rather heaps to learn. We forgot to get a cook."

"A cook? But I thought--I understood that curtseying maid of yours was
going to do all that?"

"So did I. So did he. But she won't."

Priscilla flushed, for since Tussie left after tea she had had
grievous surprises, of a kind that made her first indignant and then
inclined to wince. Fritzing had not been able to hide from her that
Annalise had rebelled and refused to cook, and Priscilla had not been
able to follow her immediate impulse and dismiss her. It was at this
point, when she realized this, that the wincing began. She felt
perfectly sick at the thought, flashed upon her for the first time,
that she was in the power of a servant.

"Do you mean to say," said Tussie in a voice hollow with
consternation, "that you've had no dinner?"

"Dinner? In a cottage? Why of course there was no dinner. There never
will be any dinner--at night, at least. But the tragic thing is there
was no supper. We didn't think of it till we began to get hungry.
Annalise began first. She got hungry at six o'clock, and said
something to Fritz--my uncle about it, but he wasn't hungry himself
then and so he snubbed her. Now he is hungry himself, and he's gone
out to see if he can't find a cook. It's very stupid. There's nothing
in the house. Annalise ate the bread and things she found. She's
upstairs now, crying." And Priscilla's lips twitched as she looked at
Tussie's concerned face, and she began to laugh.

He seized his hat. "I'll go and get you something," he said, dashing
at the door.

"I can't think what, at this time of the night. The only shop shuts at
seven."

"I'll make them open it."

"They go to bed at nine."

"I'll get them out of bed if I have to shie stones at their windows
all night."

"Don't go without your coat--you'll catch a most frightful cold."

He put his arm through the door to take it, and vanished in the fog.
He did not put on the coat in his agitation, but kept it over his arm.
His comforter stayed in Priscilla's parlour, on the chair where he had
flung it. He was in evening dress, and his throat was sore already
with the cold that was coming on and that he had caught, as he
expected, running races on the Sunday at Priscilla's children's party.

Priscilla went