Perhaps if he had come straight to these relatives he might have shaken down better, but the Fates had settled otherwise. Just as the P. & O. reached Marseilles, Cedric and Githa got measles, and Aunt Hildegarde, who was most conscientious, decided that she couldn’t possibly allow Ronnie to run the risk of infection. She therefore appealed to Uncle Gerald to take him till all danger was past. This, had Ronnie known it, was asking a good deal; for Uncle Gerald, who was his father’s uncle, was an elderly bachelor of fairly fixed habits. Nevertheless, as he was fond of Ronnie’s parents, and there really seemed to be nobody else, he agreed to take the little boy till such time as the nursery at Golder’s Green was ready to receive him. He even came up himself to Charing Cross to meet the P. & O. express, and took over Ronnie from kind Mrs. Frith, who, with three children of her own to look after, had yet found room in her heart to love Ronnie quite a lot. As he sat there in the sunshine gazing at the golden waves, he thought of the blue green waves that washed around the big home-bound steamer, and in remembering the voyage, unconsciously compared his aunt and Mrs. Frith, wondering why it was Aunt Hildegarde made you "feel so different." Mrs. Frith was often hasty—four children and an ayah in the Red Sea are enough to put an edge on the smoothest temper—but she was always fair even in her hastiness. And she judged the exasperating conduct of Ronnie with precisely the same amount of irritation as she brought to bear on that of her own offspring. Aunt Hildegarde kept a quite separate compartment in her mind for the consideration of Ronnie. He was conscious of this and resented it. Then memory swung back to Uncle Gerald—Uncle Gerald coming down the drive in a cloud of dogs.