umoured I shall be. Also she will look after you while I am playing
golf at Littlestone--not that I have ever known you to need looking
after."

"Oh, sir, it will be nice!" said Pollyooly, still somewhat breathless.

The Honourable John Ruffin smiled at her amiably.

"This morning we will pack; this afternoon we will go," he said.

Pollyooly had to slip up to their attic at once to tell the Lump, who
was playing there peacefully, the splendid news. He received it in
placid silence; apparently it did not seem to him to be a matter on
which he was called to comment either favourably or unfavourably.
Pollyooly moved about the world on very light, dancing feet; and as
soon as she had washed up the breakfast things she packed their small
wardrobes in the brown tin box. Then the Honourable John Ruffin,
having finished his cigar and _Morning Post_, summoned her to help him
pack.

For a while she observed his fashion of doing so with pain and dismay.
He put his clothes in the portmanteau anyhow and crushed them firmly
down. Sometimes he stood on them, quietly.

Standing painfully now on one leg and now on the other, she endured the
sight for several minutes; then she said:

"Oh please, sir: you'd better let me do it."

"Why? What's wrong with my way of doing it?" said the Honourable John
Ruffin, looking down at the confused mess with some surprise.

"Look how you're crumpling your shirts, sir," said Pollyooly.

"I thought that that was what trunks and portmanteaux were for. But
have it your own way. Deal with it yourself," said the Honourable John
Ruffin with airy indifference.

He lighted another cigar and watched Pollyooly take the clothes out of
the portmanteau and replace them neatly with some regard to their shape
and the space to be filled, finding room for a dozen things which he
had been forced to leave out. Then, when she had filled half the
portmanteau, he said:

"Always fresh accomplishments, Mrs. Bride. If you go on at this rate,
you will certainly go down to posterity as the Admirable Pollyooly."

He sent down to the Inner Temple kitchen for his lunch; and Pollyooly
gave the Lump his dinner. She ate little herself; she was too excited.
They drove, proudly, in a taxicab to Cannon Street Station; and they
travelled, proudly, first-class.

The Honourable John Ruffin had bought picture papers for the two
children and a novel for himself, and now and again he paused in his
reading to observe t