'For Fraulein, or for baby, or for mother,' he laughed. 'Or any other,' chuckled Miss Waghorn. 'Who needs a bit of sleep----' 'But yet can do without it----' she carried it on. Then both together, after a second's pause-- 'If they must----' and burst out laughing. Goodness, how did _she_ know the rhyme? Was it everywhere? Was thought running loose like wireless messages to be picked up by all who were in tune for acceptance? 'Well, I never!' he heard her exclaim, 'if that's not a nursery rhyme of my childhood that I've not heard for sixty years and more! I declare,' she added with innocent effrontery, 'I've not heard it since I was ten years old. And I was born in '37--the year----' 'Just fancy!' he tried to stop her. 'Queen Victoria came to the throne.' 'Strange,' he said more to himself than to any one else. She did not contradict him. 'You or me?' asked Monkey, who overheard. 'All of us,' he answered. 'We all think the same things. It's a dream, I believe; the whole thing is a dream.' 'It's a fact though,' said Miss Waghorn with decision, 'and now I must go and write my letters, and then finish a bit of lace I'm doing. You will excuse me?' She rose, made a little bow, and left the table. Mother watched her go. 'What _has_ come over the old lady?' she thought. 'She seems to be getting back her mind and memory too. How very odd!' In the afternoon Henry Rogers had been into Neuchatel. It seemed he had some business there of a rather private nature. He was very mysterious about it, evading several offers to accompany him, and after supper he retired early to his own room in the carpenter's house. And, since he now was the principal attraction, a sort of magnet that drew the train of younger folk into his neighbourhood, the Pension emptied, and the English family, deprived of their leader, went over to the Den. 'Partir a l'anglaise,' laughed the Widow Jequier, as she saw them file away downstairs; and then she sighed. Some day, when the children were older and needed a different education, they would all go finally. Down these very stairs they would go into the street. She loved them for themselves, but, also, the English family was a permanent source of income to her, and the chief. They stayed on in the winter, when boarders were few and yet living expenses doubled. She sighed, and fluttered into her tiny room to take her finery off, finery that had once been worn in Scotland and had reached her by way of Cook and _la petite vitesse_ in the Magic Box. And presently she fluttered out again and summoned her sister. The Postmaster had gone to bed; the kitchen girl was washing up the last dishes; Miss Waghorn would hardly come down again. The salon was deserted.