"Thank you _so_ much," Fiammetta said sweetly. "You don’t mind now, do you, dear Mrs. Stacey? And may I have the Jungle Book to take with me?" She took the book from Aunt Alice’s unresisting hands as she passed. She skipped out of the window and across the lawn. She arranged herself in a garden chair with a leg-rest, all in full view of the windows ... and Uncle Edward began to read. He read for an hour and a half. Even Aunt Alice looked three times at the clock during the last half-hour. When at length he did finish, and Hermy and Viola and I were about to flee into the garden to hunt for Fiammetta, who had long ago tired of the Jungle Book and wandered away, he stayed us with a motion of his hand. "I hope," he said gravely, "that you will let this evening’s incident be a lesson to you, an object-lesson as to how a guest should _not_ behave." Hermy and Viola looked duly disgusted at Fiammetta’s conduct; I, as usual when confronted with Uncle Edward, looked foolish. None of the three of us made any remark. "Remember," he said, "that the perfect guest invariably falls in with every custom of his host. He becomes a part of the household. You understand?" "Yes, papa," said Hermy and Viola in dutiful chorus; "we will always try to." "And you, Janey, will you lay this lesson to heart?" "Yes, Uncle Edward," I, too, said meekly; and then, feeling rather mean, I added, "but father says we ought to _ask_ our guests if they like things." "Certainly," he replied coldly, "in reason; but you cannot disorganise the entire working of a household to please a guest. Especially," he added, with evident annoyance, "when that guest happens to be a spoilt, conceited child." "I don’t think Fiammetta is conceited," I pleaded, "but she’s used to saying right out when she hates things——" "That will do, Janey," Aunt Alice interposed hastily. "Run away, children, and find Fiammetta." As we ran, I reflected that Uncle Edward certainly did not himself fulfil his definition of the perfect guest. When he stayed with us, poor father couldn’t smoke a single pipe in the house, and all fruits that had any sort of a smell were banished from the _menu_. We found Fiammetta at last in the garage, conversing with the chauffeur. "He’s really a much more interesting man than Mr. Stacey," she confided to me that night when she came to sleep in my bed the floor _was_ hard and rather cold—"he told me about all the accidents he’s ever been in." *XVII* *A SOLDIER’S BUTTON* His family could not understand why Teddy had such a passion for soldiers. Certainly his family neither inspired nor shared it. Papa declared them to be "elementary persons of a low standard of intelligence."