"I always _ask_," Teddy replied candidly, "but people never tells me all I want to know. Sometimes they don’t even answer." "I should think not," cried Viola. "A little boy like you! Run away and play with your horse and cart. Fiammetta has come to see _us_, not you." "_Have_ you?" the downright Teddy asked wistfully. "I’ve come to see all of you," Fiammetta said graciously, "though I’m really staying with Janey, you know." "Perhaps you’ll come and stay with us too, mother said; without Janey, for a bit," Hermy suggested. Fiammetta stared. "Without Janey?" she repeated. "Why?" Hermy looked rather uncomfortable. "Well, in case Janey didn’t care to come, you know," and Hermy put her arm round Fiammetta. Fiammetta drew herself away: "I shouldn’t like it at all without Janey, thank you," she said stiffly; "she’s my greatest friend." Hermy and Viola looked at each other and then at me, as though they were considering me in a new light. Teddy, who had not done his sister’s bidding and was still hanging on the outskirts of our little group, said suddenly, "I’ll come and stay with both of you whenever you ask me, wivout Nana," and he thrust a sticky little hand into mine. My heart went out to him, and I gave the hot small hand a squeeze. Teddy and I were of the inarticulate, but we understood one another. Viola turned ostentatiously to Fiammetta. "Would you," she asked sweetly, "like to see me dance? Fräulein will play for me, and we have half an hour before we go down to father in the drawing-room." "No, thank you," Fiammetta replied with the utmost decision: "I see plenty of girls dancing at school, and I can dance myself—perhaps you’d like to see _me_ dance?" "I think," Viola said hastily, "that we’d better neither of us dance just now, lest we get too hot. Shall we go out into the garden till reading time?" This we did. On the stroke of six a bell was rung from the front door and we all four went to the drawing-room, where Aunt Alice and Uncle Edward awaited us. It was his custom to read to his family every evening at this hour, unless there happened to be a garden-party. Whatever anybody was doing, they were haled to the drawing-room to hear Uncle Edward read aloud. "Edward reads so beautifully," Aunt Alice always said, and I dare say he did. But no one always wants to listen to the most perfect reading, and this evening I noted with some consternation that Fiammetta was bored, and showed it. She fidgeted, she yawned, she drummed with her fingers on the edge of her chair. Once she shuffled her feet, and Uncle Edward actually stopped and looked severely at me. I know he gave me the credit for all the small disturbances that occurred that evening, whereas I was still as a mouse, and far too interested in Fiammetta’s frank manifestations of _ennui_ to have indulged in any myself.