"How are you, auntie?" she said, kissing Lady Tasker on both cheeks. "Give me your things. Somehow I thought you might come to-day, but I'd almost given you up. Do look what Eva's sent me! Really, with her own to look after, I don't know how she finds the time! Aren't they sweet!----" And she held them up. Now Lady Tasker knew perfectly well the meaning of her niece's accordion-pleating; but she was seventy and worldly-wise again now. Therefore as she looked at the things she remarked off-handedly, "But they're far too small." "Too small!" Dorothy exclaimed. "Of course they aren't. Why, Noel was only nine, and that's pretty big, and Jackie only just over eight-and-a-half, though he put on weight while you watched him. They're just right." Lady Tasker reached for a chair. "But they _are_ for Jackie, aren't they?" Dorothy's blue eyes were as big as the plates in her cupboards.--"Jackie! Good gracious, auntie!----" "Eh?" said Lady Tasker, sitting down. "Not Jackie? Dear me. How stupid of me. Of course, I did hear, but I've so many other things to think of, and nobody'd suppose, to look at you----" Dorothy ran to her aunt and gave her a kiss and a hug, a loud kiss and a hug like two. "You dear old thing!--Really, I'd begun to _hate_ all the horrid kind people who asked me how I felt to-day and whether I shouldn't be glad when it was over! What business is it of theirs? I nearly made Stan sack Ruth last week, she looked so, and I positively refuse to have a young girl anywhere near me!... But wasn't it sweet of Eva? I'll give you some tea and then read you her letter. Indian or China?" "China," Lady Tasker remarked. "China, Ruth, and I'll have some more too. I don't know whether His Impudence is coming in or not; he's gadding off somewhere, I expect.... But you weren't only _pretending_ just now, were you, auntie?----" She put the plug of the spirit-kettle into the wall. "Well, how are the Bits?" Lady Tasker asked.... (Perhaps "His Impudence" and "The Bits" require explanation. Both expressions Dorothy had from her "maid," Ruth Mossop. "Maid" is thus written because Ruth was a young widow, who, after a series of disciplinary knockings-about by the late Mr. Mossop, was not over-troubled with maternal anxiety for the four children he had left her with. When asked by Dorothy whether she would prefer to be called Mrs. Mossop or Ruth, Mrs. Mossop had chosen the latter name, giving as her reason that it had been like Mr. Mossop's impudence to ask her to accept the other name at all; and very many other memories also, brooded on and gloomily loved, including the four children, had been bits of Mr. Mossop's impudence. Stan had adopted the phrase, finding in it chuckles of his own; and so His Impudence he had become, and Noel and Jackie the fruits thereof.) Dorothy put her fair head on one side, as if she considered the absent Bits critically and dispassionately, and really thought that on the whole she might venture to approve of them.