At lunch-time Sillon made cocoa on the gas-stove in the pantry off the back parlour, and Devery cooked spaghetti. And for the first time they took her up into the little bedroom they had on the floor above, and showed her some of their belongings--photographs of uncles, brothers, cousins. Sillon had a stuffed cobra and a thrilling tale about it, and Devery some studies she had made in her Paris days. Then they all went into the street, to look again at the "ANGÉLIQUE"; lingering in the October brightness, the wind blowing their skirts, their hair, making them frolicsome and gay. "I _hate_ work!" said Devery, stretching up her thin arms, while her purple smock whipped about her lean, straight torso in classic folds. "What would you like to do?" asked Angelica. "Just live--like cats, without any aim. I’d never accomplish anything. Just as soon as you do accomplish anything, you see that it wasn’t worth doing. What _is_?" "Devery, you’re morbid and hypocritical," said Sillon. "You don’t mean that. Besides, cats don’t feel like that, my child. When they’ve caught a mouse, they feel that it was very much worth doing." "Oh, well, so do I! I think it’s worth while to catch my meals, somehow. Angelica, what an industrious soul you are! I don’t believe you’d enjoy being idle." "I’d be miserable if I didn’t think I was getting forward." "How did we get such a paragon?" asked Sillon. "Suppose we go out to dinner?" suggested Devery suddenly. "Early, and then to the movies?" "I’ll telephone to mother first," said Angelica, "to see if it will be all right if I don’t go home." A punctilious and Eddie-like form, and nothing more. "Mother!" she began. "I won’t be home for dinner." "Angie!" came the very tremulous voice of Mrs. Kennedy, always distressed at the telephone. "Better come home as early as you can. There’s a lady here to see you--Mrs. Russell." Angelica was shocked, terrified. "Something’s happened to Eddie!" she thought at first. And then came an idea that turned her cold with fright. "They’ve found out! She knows! She’s come to tell me what she thinks of me!" II Nothing of the sort, however. Mrs. Russell sat there, waiting, all smiles and affability, for the sole purpose of inviting Angelica to visit Buena Vista. She had had a letter from Eddie, in which he had rather severely requested her to show all due civility to his future wife. "He really means it!" she had said to her husband. "I hoped he’d forgotten. I really thought the thing had blown over. Beastly, isn’t it? Imagine her here!" "It doesn’t frighten me," Dr. Russell said jauntily. "Satyr!" she said. "You can’t be trusted out of my sight!" And both he and she were pleased and proud of his senile impudence.