"Rupert's got as sound and balanced a mind as any man could wish for, but once let the right woman get hold of him, and she will twist him round her little finger." Those words of her husband recurred to Cicely now, as she lifted her eyes from their contemplation of her own dainty shoes and looked up into Rupert's rugged face. "I should rather like to see a woman twist you round her little finger," she said irrelevantly. "A woman--me? What on earth have a woman and I got to do with James's delinquencies?" "There is method in my madness, but the lane that led from James to your little finger, and the not impossible she, is so long that I can't take you back along its windings. It all comes of the power of association. I shall have Baba taught everything by association. I am planning a scheme of education that----" "Where does James come in to the plan for Baba's education?" Rupert contrived to ask, his grey eyes shining, a whimsical smile playing round his mouth. "Oh! my dear boy, I had completely forgotten James, though talking of Baba would soon have reminded me of him--poor silly thing! Baba ran away two days ago in that appalling fog--and----" "_Baba ran away?_" "Well, the door was open; I suppose the outside world looked rather fascinating and mysterious, and she has no nurse just now, you know; so there was no one with her; and, of course, Jane, the nursery maid, was fetching something from the kitchen--and--well, the long and the short of it was that Baba ran out into the street, and was promptly swallowed up by the fog." "My dear Cicely!" "Providentially, as I now consider it, I was out. I had an early appointment with Mathilde." "Your dressmaker?" "My dressmaker. Wasn't it kind of luck, or whatever it is, to let it all happen when I wasn't there. Rupert, if I had been at home, and they told me Baba was lost, I should have gone straight off my head." "That would have been an eminently useful and practical thing to do," was the dry retort. "You have never been a mother; you don't know what a mother feels like about her only child," Cicely said with an attempt at dignity that sat quaintly upon her small person and drew an amused laugh from her cousin. "I believe it would kill me if anything really happened to Baba," she went on, more gravely; "you think I'm just a silly, frivolous thing, but--Baba is all the world to me." "I know, dear; I know quite well," Rupert answered kindly; "and nobody could think you silly. But go on and tell me what happened two days ago. We haven't got to James's shortcomings _yet_."