’She’s perfectly distracting at times, miss; that’s why I forgot to serve her first.’ ’Oh, you are my gweatest comfort, Bwown; have you known muvver long?’ ’Can’t remember the time when I didn’t know her, miss.’ ’Neither can I,’ said the Poppet. ’I weally don’t know what I should do without you, Bwown.’ ’I’m sure I’m very much obliged, miss,’ he said, and kissed her little hands, and then offered to make her another boat or a new doll’s house if she’d rather. How do I know that last bit? Why, a little bird told Nannie, and Nannie told me, besides I always know everything. Oh, you silly men, because you don’t see the finger on the pulse you don’t believe it’s there. Why, I know every heartbeat in the house (including Brown’s!) and so does every other woman! *CHAPTER XXVI* Ross departed to London last Monday with Sam. And I took the bit in my teeth and went up by the train after they did. I could see Ross and Sam hanging on to the red lights at the back of the last coach. They catch their trains like that (men always do). I, of course, like every other woman, invariably catch the train before. I went to the Red Cross shop and bought a set of General Service uniform, and when I got home I found ’Uncle John’ in a state of great excitement because he _had_ found the date in the roof, as Ross had said he might! I went up the ladder to look at it. It is carved roughly on a beam. The wood is in as good a state of preservation as the day it was put in, and some initials (of the man who built the house, I suppose) are carved over it so:— J.H.T. 1570 Elizabethan, after all! It is such a pity that Ross is away, as I have no one to gloat with me, but when he comes back and rows about the hospital, I shall say,— ’Yes, but I’ve found the date,’ and then all will be harmony and love. No one could be angry with a person who had found the date 1570. I have to get up so desperately early in the morning. Nannie is horrid about the whole thing, refuses to call me or help me dress, says she is sure Master Michael won’t approve and that she’s not going to have any hand in it. However, 1570 consoles me for much, though everything else is rather beastly. So on Tuesday I went to the hospital. It was a vile morning, blowing half a gale and raining. It took me so long to get into the unaccustomed clothes without Nannie that I had to run most of the way to avoid being late.