Perhaps you think that that was a very graceful way of treating the situation, but I didn't. We were all simply dying to laugh. We couldn't think of old mills with that cap sticking on Elise's butter. However, I heard Father at the other end of the table making some sort of an answer to Elise, and all of us managed to control themselves somehow or other. Nellie, red in the face, carried the bread-and-butter plate away; Oliver sneaked back into his place; and I slowly began to cool off. But of course it spoiled the meal for me. As soon after the horrible occurrence as possible, I escaped up here to my cupola, and Tom found me here before he went to bed. I knew he must be disappointed at the way I was running things. I hadn't been alone with him before, and when his head pushed up through the trap door and he asked, "You here?" I didn't answer. I was sitting in the pitch dark on the window-seat, but Tom must have seen my shadow for he came up and stood beside me. He remained perfectly silent for a minute then he said, "Aren't there a lot of stars out to-night!" "Oh, Tom," I burst out, "I'm so sorry! Wasn't it awful? Everything's going all wrong." He sat down. "It's all right, Bobbie," he said quietly. "Only I wish Elise might see us as we really are. _Then_," he added, "you would see Elise as _she_ really is." Tom didn't ask me how I liked her (he knew better than to do that), and suddenly I felt sorry for my brother. I could have almost cried, not because of the accident at dinner, not because of my failure, but because Elise hadn't made us like her. I did so want Tom's wife to be the same bully sort of person Tom was. The crisis came the next day. At eleven o'clock in the morning, I found Delia putting on her coat and hat, actually preparing to go. "What does this mean?" I exclaimed. "Can't you see?" she asked very saucily. "But the washing. Have you--" "No, I haven't, and what's more I'm not going to." She was spitting mad. I stood there, just helpless before her. "I have telephoned to all the intelligence offices," I said, "and I can't get anyone to come until Saturday night. I thought, to accommodate us, you might be willing--" She cut me right off: "Well, I'm not! No one accommodates me here, and I'm not used to being treated like this. Two dinners a day and up until all hours!" It didn't seem to me as if she had half so much to stand as I did. I wished I could up and clear out too. I thought she was very disagreeable to leave me in the lurch that way. But I didn't have any words with her. I told her she might go as soon as she pleased. I hated the sight of her standing there in the kitchen, which she had left all spick and span, not as a kitchen should look at eleven in the morning with half a dozen full-grown mouths to be fed at one o'clock. I was on my way upstairs to break the news to Nellie when Elise called to me from the sitting-room.