"Hah," Jackie snorted. "I bet if anybody left anybody Percy would do the leaving." "Well, maybe he was an awful drunkard and she left him. I bet she's divorced." "She wears a wedding ring," Jackie said. "She wouldn't wear her wedding ring if she were divorced." "Well, maybe he has amnesia and he's just wandering about." Jackie snorted again, then said, "I used to think that when she went out every Sunday afternoon maybe he had T.B. or was insane or something and in a sanitarium and she went to see him. But now we know she just goes to see this Paul." The bell rang and Jackie tucked her hot water bottle carefully under the covers and got in after it. Lying in bed after Miss Tulip had turned out the lights, and after she had said her prayers, Flip, too, wondered about Madame Perceval. Often she had noticed the sad look in her eyes and thought perhaps it had something to do with Denise. And she was worried because sometimes at night when she dreamed about her mother, her mother's face would be interchangeable with Madame Perceval's. But this night she fell asleep and dreamed that she was running to meet her mother down a long path, and just as she got up to her, her mother turned into Eunice Jackman, who was saying, "Really, Philippa, you're too clumsy for words. Can't you get out of my way?" 3 Flip saw the dark man once again on the Sunday before the holidays. She was at the gate-house and Paul had sent her out to the kitchen to ask Thérèse for some bread and jam. When she opened the kitchen door, there he was leaning against the sink and drinking a cup of coffee. As Flip pushed open the door he put the cup down quickly and slipped out. "What do you want?" Thérèse asked crossly. "Some bread and jam, please, Thérèse." Thérèse gave her the bread and jam and when Flip got back to the living room she asked Paul, "Who is that man?" "What man?" "I don't know. There was a man in the kitchen drinking coffee but he went away when I came in." "I'll go see," Paul said. Flip waited, gnawing away on a chunk of bread and jam while Ariel tried to scramble onto her lap and share it with her. Paul returned, saying, "Thérèse says there wasn't anybody there." "There _was_," Flip persisted. "I saw him." Paul sat down on the floor and helped himself to bread and jam. "Oh, well, he was probably one of Thérèse's boy friends. She's always having her boy friends in and feeding them things and then she pretends that they weren't there and she gave the food to Ariel. Just think, Flip, next Sunday you won't have to go back to school. You'll be living here." Flip sighed, curled on the fur rug with Ariel licking her ear, and the warmth from the fire flickering over her body. "That will be wonderful. I can ski all day long and we can talk and talk and talk--" She had almost forgotten her disappointment at not being with her father. 4