Milk puddings were too painfully ordinary, but a bag of macaroni seemed to offer at once an easy and a tasty alternative. Bridgie felt herself quite capable of boiling the sticks into tenderness, and scraping down cheese to add to the milky concoction, and a further search discovered a dark yellow lump stowed away in the corner of a cupboard evidently destined for such an end. It was wonderfully hard; Bridgie's fingers ached with the strain of cutting it, and she shook her pretty head solemnly over the wastefulness of servants in not using up materials before their freshness was lost. She had intended to use the whole of the piece, but it took so long to prepare that she stopped half-way, and to judge by the mellow brownness of the pudding when she peeped at it in the oven, quality had more than made up for quantity. Sylvia sniffed delicately as she limped over the threshold, for the pudding had a strangely powerful smell, not exactly savoury perhaps, but distinctly fresh and wholesome. Bridgie bridled in proud consciousness of success the while she tucked up her guest on the drawing-room sofa. "I've been making a pudding for you, dear. Mind you enjoy it! Mary is out, so you are to excuse everything that goes wrong. There's a pretty pink cushion to match your dress. I never saw that dress before! You are wonderfully smart, Miss Sylvia Trevor!" "It's for the boys," said Sylvia, laughing. "I want to make a good impression, for I am dreadfully afraid they mayn't like me. I know nothing about young men. They never penetrate into Number Six, and Aunt Margaret thinks it is proper to ignore their existence between the ages of six and sixty. I thought if I put on the bright dress and my pet chiffon fichu, they might not notice how thin my hair is at the top!" "I'll tell them not to notice," said Bridgie gravely. She crossed the room and poked the fire with the best brass poker, a real, live coal fire and no wretched asbestos imitation, and knelt on the rug holding out her hands to the blaze and scorching her cheeks with undisturbed complacency. The room was mathematically the same in size and shape as the one across the road, but oh, how different in appearance! The one was a museum for the preservation of household gods, the other a haven for rest and amusement, where comfort was the first consideration and appearance the last. Bridgie's mending-basket stood on the floor, Jack's pipe peered from behind a chimney-piece ornament, and a bulky blotter and well- filled ink-bottle showed that the writing-table was really and seriously meant for use.