Mr. Peck remained staring at Mrs. Munger, as if doubtful what to do. Then he said: “You seem not to have understood me, ma'am. I should be to blame if I left you in doubt. You have been guilty of forgetting your brother's weakness, and if the consequence has promptly followed in his shame, it is for you to realise it. I wish you a good evening.” He went out with a dignity that thrilled Annie. Lyra leaned toward her and said, choking with laughter, “He's left Idella asleep upstairs. We haven't _any_ of us got _perfect_ memories, have we?” “Run after him!” Annie said to Jack Wilmington, in undertone, “and get him into my carriage. I'll get the little girl. Lyra, _don't_ speak of it.” “Never!” said Mrs. Wilmington, with delight. “I'm solid for Mr. Peck every time.” XIX. Annie made up a bed for Idella on a wide, old-fashioned lounge in her room, and put her away in it, swathed in a night-gown which she found among the survivals of her own childish clothing in that old chest of drawers. When she woke in the morning she looked across at the little creature, with a tender sense of possession and protection suffusing her troubled recollections of the night before. Idella stirred, stretched herself with a long sigh, and then sat up and stared round the strange place as if she were still in a dream. “Would you like to come in here with me?” Annie suggested from her bed. The child pushed back her hair with her little hands, and after waiting to realise the situation to the limit of her small experience, she said, with a smile that showed her pretty teeth, “Yes.” “Then come.” Idella tumbled out of bed, pulling up the nightgown, which was too long for her, and softly thumped across the carpet. Annie leaned over and lifted her up, and pressed the little face to her own, and felt the play of the quick, light breath over her cheek. “Would you like to stay with me--live with me--Idella?” she asked. The child turned her face away, and hid a roguish smile in the pillow. “I don't know.” “Would you like to be my little girl?” “No.” “No? Why not?” “Because--because”--she seemed to search her mind--“because your night-gowns are too long.” “Oh, is that all? That's no reason. Think of something else.” Idella rubbed her face hard on the pillow. “You dress up cats.” She lifted her face, and looked with eyes of laughing malice into Annie's, and Annie pushed her face against Idella's neck and cried, “You're a rogue!” The little one screamed with laughter and gurgled: “Oh, you tickle! You tickle!” They had a childish romp, prolonged through the details of Idella's washing and dressing, and Annie tried to lose, in her frolic with the child, the anxieties that had beset her waking; she succeeded in confusing them with one another in one dull, indefinite pain.