But this time Amory had moved towards the door. Cosimo, and not she, had wanted Miss Belchamber down, and now that he had got her he might amuse her. She thought he looked extremely foolish, but that was his look-out; she was going to bed. It seemed an entirely satisfactory moment in which to do so. She had managed better than she had hoped. The question of the fund had been satisfactorily raised, and it was obvious that the "Novum" would gain by having somebody on the spot, somebody perhaps less biassed than Mr. Prang, to advise upon its Indian policy. At the door she turned her nasturtium-coloured head. "You might think over what I've been saying," she said. "We can talk of it again in a day or two. Especially my second suggestion, that about the 'Novum.' That seems to me very well worth considering. Good night." And she passed out, leaving Cosimo plucking his lip irresolutely, and Miss Britomart Belchamber deeply interested in the common tendon of the other soleus and gastrocnemius. Part III I LITMUS It was on an afternoon in May, and the window of Dorothy's flat overlooking the pond was wide open. Ruffles of wind chased one another from moment to moment across the water, and the swans, guarding their cygnets, policed the farther bank, where dogs ran barking. The two elder Bits played in the narrow strip of garden below; again the frieze of the room was a soft net of rippling light; and the brightness of the sun--or so Ruth Mossop declared--had put the fire out. Ruth was alone in the flat. As she passed between the pond-room and the kitchen, re-lighting the fire, "sweeping in," and preparing tea, she sang cheerfully to herself "_A few more years shall roll, a few more sorrows come_." Ruth considered that the sorrows would probably come by means of the youngest Bit. He ought (she said) to have been a little girl. Then, in after years, he might have been a bit of comfort to his mother. Boys, in Ruth's experience, were rarely that. As she put the cakes for tea into the oven of the stove there came a milk-call from below. Ruth leaned out of the lift-window, and there ensued a conversation with the white-jacketed milk-boy. "Saw your guv'nor last night," the boy grinned. "Where's that cream I ordered, and that quart of nursery milk? You can't mind your business for thinking of picture palaces." "Keep your 'air on; coming up now.--I say, they put 'is 'ead under a steam-'ammer. I said it was a dummy, but Gwen said it wasn't. _Was_ it 'im?" "You mind your own interference, young man, and leave others to mind theirs; you ought to have something better to do with your threepences than collecting cigarette cards and taking girls to the pictures." "It was in '_Bullseye Bill: A Drarmer of Love an' 'Ate_'--'Scoundrel, 'ow dare you speak those words to a pure wife an' mother on the very threshold of the 'Ouse of----'"