"Well--he did. Teddy isn't half the fool you think him. I don't exactly mean you, Chris, but people. His father has a tremendous farm, miles and miles of it. He sent Teddy over here for six months. What do you think for?" Christina couldn't think. "To find a wife!" said Evie. "Isn't it quaint? And do you know that Teddy is staying at the Carlton-Grand. I thought he was living with his aunt in Tenton Street and I only discovered by accident that he was staying at a swagger hotel. He said he would write and tell his father about our lord." She sighed heavily. "I like Teddy awfully. He is so grateful for--well, for anything I can do for him, such as putting his tie straight and telling him about things." "Why don't you marry Teddy?" A few weeks ago Evie would have snorted scornfully. Now she was silent for a long time. She sighed again. "That is impossible. I'm too fond of Ronnie and I believe in keeping--in keeping my word. Teddy's father is building a beautiful little house for him. And Teddy says that he has a quiet horse that a girl could ride. He believes in riding astride, so do I. I've never ridden, but that is the way I _should_ ride--through the corn for miles and miles. You can see the mountains from Teddy's farm. They are covered with snow, even in the summer. There is a place called Banff where you can have a perfectly jolly time, dances and all that. In the winter, when it is freezingly cold, Teddy goes to Vancouver, where it is quite warm. He has an orange-farm somewhere." For the third time she sighed. Christina in her wisdom, made no comment. V Evie usually had her breakfast alone. Christina was late and Mrs. Colebrook breakfasted before her family came down and was, moreover, so completely occupied in supplying the needs of her youngest daughter, that it would have been impossible to settle herself down to a meal. Evie was generally down by a quarter to eight; the post came at eight o'clock. Until recently Evie had no interest in the movements of that official. Very few letters came to the house in any circumstances and of these Evie's share was negligible. Teddy brought a new interest to the morning for he was a faithful correspondent, and the girl would have known long before, that he was an inmate of a superior caravanserie, had not the youth, in his modesty, written on the plainest of notepaper. Not then, nor at any other time, did the mail have any thrill for Mrs. Colebrook. She had a well-to-do sister living in the north who wrote to her regularly every six months. These letters might have been published as a supplement to the Nomenclature of Diseases, for they constituted a record of the obscure ailments which inflicted the writer's family. She had a sister-in-law living within a mile of her, whom she seldom saw and never heard from. Whatever letters came to the house were either for Christina or Evie, generally for Christina.