"Ra-ther little dears; but oh, Heaven, how _are_ we going to manage with a third!" Her aunt dissociated herself from the problem with a shrug.--"Well--if Stan will persist in thinking that his dressing-room is merely a room for him to dress in----" "So I tell him," Dorothy murmured, with great meekness. "But--but flats aren't made for children. We did manage to seize the estate agent's little office for a nursery when all the flats were let, but when Stan brings a man home we have to sleep him in the dressing-room as it is--," (Lady Tasker shook her head, but the words "Wrong man" were hardly audible), "--and a house will mean stair-carpets, and hall furniture, and I don't know what else. Besides, Stan hasn't time to look for one----" "No?" said Lady Tasker drily. "He really hasn't, poor boy," Dorothy protested. "And he's after something really good this time--Fortune and Brooks, the what-d'-you-call-'ems, in Pall Mall----" "What about them?" "Well, Stan's been told that they pay awfully good commissions, for introductions, new accounts, you know; Stan dines out, say, and makes himself nice to somebody with whole stacks of money, and mentions Fortune & Brooks's chutney and pickled peaches and things, and--and----" "I know," remarked Lady Tasker, with not much more expression than if she had been a talking doll and somebody had pulled the string that worked the speaking apparatus. She did know these dazzling schemes of her smart and helpless nephew's--his club secretaryships, his projects for journals that should combine the various desirable features of the "Field" and "Country Life" and the "Sporting Times" and "Punch," his pony deals, and his other innumerable attempts to make of his saunters down Bond Street to St. James's and back _viâ_ the Junior Carlton and Regent Street a source of income. Perhaps she knew, too, that Dorothy knew of her knowledge, for she went on, "Well, well--let's hope there's more in it than there was in the fishing-flies--now tell me what Eva's got fresh." "Oh, yes!" cried Dorothy, plunging her hand into her letters. "Eva sent the things, but here's Dot's first--look at the darling's writing!----" And from a sheet of paper with a regimental heading Dorothy began to read: "DEAREST AUNT DOROTHY,-- "were in murree and we got a servant that wigles his toes when we speak to him and he loves baba and makes noises like him and there are squiboos in the tres--" --(she means squirrels)-- "--and ive got a parrot uncle tony bought me and uncle tony says the monsoon will praps fale and the peple wont have anything to eat but weve lots and i like this better than kohat the shops are lovely but there are lots of flees and they bite baba and he cries this is a long letter how are Jackie and noel i got the photograf--" --(that's the new one on the mantelpiece)--