"It is only when I lie awake at night, listening to the jackals—they always make me feel so desperately depressed, and when I am quite in the blues I cannot help asking myself what would become of Angel if—anything happened to me?" "What a dismal idea, an odious little blue devil!" he exclaimed. "You should light a lamp and read some cheery novel; that would soon chase him away." "And I might fall asleep, and set the bungalow on fire." "Look here, Lena," he resumed, hitching his chair a little closer, "you know I'm pretty well off; no debts, no wife." "Fancy naming them in the same breath!" she protested with a laugh. "Well, sometimes one brings the other," and he nodded his head gaily; then, lowering his voice, he continued, "I daresay it is hard for Wilkinson to make both ends meet, with heavy insurances, and all that sort of thing"—Wilkinson was scrupulously saving and investing half of his pay—"so—so——" Then, with a sudden rush, "If you'll just run up to the hills for three months, and take Angel and the boys—I'll make it all right—you know I'm your cousin." "Yes," she assented rather bitterly, "and the only Gascoigne who ever deigned to take the smallest notice of me; but it can't be done, Phil. You are a dear good fellow to suggest it, and if the matter lay with me I'd accept it like a shot and be off to-morrow; but Richard would not hear of it." "Well, then, let me send Angel, with an ayah, to some good boarding-house where the lady will look after her. Surely, he would make no objection to that. She would be out of his sight for months." "Perhaps not; but he has such odd ideas, and although he does not want her here, I doubt if he would allow her to go elsewhere. There," starting up, "I hear him now. He is coming." "At any rate, you might sound him, Lena, and I'll call in for Angel at half-past five." "Hullo, Gascoigne—you here?" and a stout, breathless little man, with prodigious moustache and a shining round face, came puffing up the steps. "I tell you," he panted, "this day is going to be a corker!—my reins were mad hot, and Graham says there are five cases of heat apoplexy in hospital. Lena, we must have the cuscus tatties up at once." "They say this season is to be something quite extra," remarked Gascoigne, who had risen to his feet. "Yes, yes," cried Colonel Wilkinson, "the usual bazaar talk. But," mopping his face, "if this is the beginning, where shall we all be in the end of May—eh, Lena?" "In the cemetery, perhaps," she suggested gravely. "Come, come, old woman—none of your ghastly jokes. Hullo, Beany boy; well, my Pinkums. Ayah," in a sharper key, "what do you mean by letting Master Beany wear his best shoes?" "They are all he has got, sahib—others done fall to pieces," she answered sullenly.