"I wish I could help," said Irene. "I love housework, and keeping things nice. I am longing for the time when we shall have a house again. Mrs. Carlyle, have you any dark blue darning wool that I can mend Tom's stockings with?" "No, dear, I have not, I have taken up that pair ever so many times and put them down again because I had no wool to mend them with." Irene thrust her hand in, "Um!" Someone had not been so particular, she thought, as her eye fell on a brown darn on the heel, and a black one at the back of the leg. "Irene, don't you think you could drop the formal name, and call me 'Aunt Kitty'? I wish you would, dear. I have no nieces or nephews of my own, and I have always longed to be 'aunt' to someone." "Why, of course I will, I should love to, Aunt Kitty--don't you have a glass of milk about this time? Shall I ask for it for you?" "Thank you--I think they must have forgotten it." She did not add that five days out of every seven the glass of milk was forgotten either entirely, or until it was so close on dinner-time that she could not take it. "I won't bother Mary to bring it, I will go and get it, if you don't mind my going into the kitchen?" Mrs. Carlyle was of the same happy, easy-going nature as Faith, and minded nothing of that sort. Even if she had known the state of muddle the kitchen was in, she would not have been troubled by Irene's going into it. But though the muddle was there, as usual, and worse than usual, Irene did not see it. The shock she received when she opened the kitchen door, drove everything else from her thoughts, and it was not until some time later that she had eyes for the kitchen itself. In the middle of the floor sat Mary, propped against the table leg, while on either side of her knelt Audrey and Faith, trying to staunch the blood which flowed freely from Mary's hand. Mary's face was as white as chalk, her eyes nearly popping out of her head with alarm. Audrey and Faith looked almost as frightened. When Irene appeared on the scene they turned their faces to her in evident relief. "Oh, Irene, Mary has cut her poor hand fearfully, and--and it will not stop bleeding, and we don't know what to do, we have been here ever so long, and it isn't stopping a bit. Do you think we ought to send for Doctor Gray?" "I shouldn't think so," said Irene reassuringly, "not if it is an ordinary cut. Let me see it, may I?" "Oh, no, you mustn't look at it. You will faint!" "I don't faint from that kind of thing, I am used to it. We are always damaging ourselves, and I doctor them all. Anyhow, I know that Mary ought not to hold her hand down like that,"--gently raising it to check the flow--"it will bleed for hours if she does. Have you any soft rag?" "Plenty, I should think," Audrey replied sarcastically, "but I don't know where to find any." Irene, looking at her closely for the first time, saw that she was white to the lips, and trembling.