We spent an exhausting hour mopping up the water. Ross said he could now sympathise with the other occupants of the Ark when Noah would keep opening the window. After we’d got the place dry Ross said,— ’It’s nearly one o’clock, Meg; come and have lunch in my room. I’ve got a thermos full of coffee and some perfectly adorable biscuits—the squashed fly sort.’ Ross really thought my ceiling might come down, so he rolled himself up on the nursery sofa, and I spent the rest of the night in his bed. I lay awake for some time groaning in spirit at the thought of the mess and muddle workmen always make, and wondering how much more of the roof was likely to descend on us. Presently I heard Ross whisper outside,— ’Meg, are you asleep?’ ’No, I wish I was.’ ’Your grammar seems as defective as your dwelling,’ he said, poking his head round the door. ’What I came in to say, Meg, was that when the workmen strip that bit of roof you may find the date of the house.’ I sat up in bed suddenly. Life seemed rosy once more. ’You angel,’ I exclaimed, ’how exciting.’ ’What a ridiculous kid you are, little ’un, up one minute and down the next.’ ’Well, it _is_ exciting. What did you wake me up for if you didn’t think so?’ ’I thought you said you weren’t asleep!’ I pushed him out and shut the door. The thought of the date so consoled me that I went to sleep immediately, but I had one of my dreadful nightmares. I dreamed that the foundations of the house fell outwards with a crash, leaving the walls, which were made of squashed fly biscuits, standing on the date—B.C. .4! ’Uncle John’ came in to survey the wreckage the next morning, but can’t repair the roof till Monday. Then I showed him the crack in my ceiling. ’That ain’t nothing, mum, surface, that is; I can put a bit of plaster on it now if you like, but it don’t need it.’ So I decided to dispense with the plaster and to sleep in my own bedroom, but my keeper thought otherwise, so we had words about it. ’Ross, what _is_ the difference between the air coming in at the roof or coming in at the window?’ But there is apparently a most enormous difference, and my brother said,— ’You’re not going to sleep in that draught. There’s a most beastly bug about just now. All the men at Canley barracks are down with it, kind of "’flu," I suppose; you get a frightful cold in your head, and then your tummy gets distended, and you can’t button your trousers, and——’ ’Is that the bug you suggest I’m going to get?’ I interrupted icily. And then he said I was abominable! I am, however, allowed to sleep in my own room after all, because ’Uncle John’ nobly suggested that the powdering closet should be boarded over till he could come and mend the roof, to which my keeper graciously agreed. But half the night I could hear that bug walking up and down in the powdering closet, scratching the boarded door, trying to get in, until I said to it,—