'You must have some beef-tea at eleven,' Miss Abingdon said, and felt glad that she was able to do something in a crisis. 'I think I was brought up on beef-tea,' said Toffy. He had accepted, with his usual philosophy, the fact that whether you broke your back or your heart a woman's unfailing remedy was a cup of beef-tea. 'And I am sure you would like your own servant,' said Miss Abingdon; 'I suppose you have some one over at Hulworth for whom you could send?' 'My man is an awful thief,' said Toffy, 'which is why I keep him. Otherwise, I don't think there is a single thing he can do, except put studs in my shirts. Hopwood will only steal Peter's things,' he added reassuringly. 'He tells me my things are generally stolen and that I never have anything to wear, and so he borrows all he can from Peter. It is an extraordinary thing,' said Sir Nigel, beginning his sentence with his usual formula--the formula of the profound philosopher who has learned to accept most things as strange and all things as inexplicable--'It is an extraordinary thing the way all your possessions disappear. You try having duplicates, but, you know, Miss Abingdon, that's not a bit of use. The first man who comes along helps himself just because you 've two of a thing, so you 're not a bit better off than you were before, are you?' The young man turned his blue eyes with their long lashes on Miss Abingdon with a look of mute inquiry, and threw one arm in its striped pyjama suit up on the pillow. Miss Abingdon told herself that she was an old woman, and suggested, with outward boldness but with inward diffidence, that Sir Nigel required a wife to look after him. The young man smiled gratefully at her. 'I think so too,' he said simply; 'but then, you see, she won't have me.' They were all so amazingly frank! Jane's friend, Kitty Sherard, the girl who smoked cigarettes in her bedroom, had actually told a funny story one day about a flirtation of her father's, and had made everybody except Miss Abingdon laugh at it. 'Perhaps,' she said, 'the lady may change her mind.' 'I don't think she will,' said Toffy slowly. 'You see, she's married already.' Miss Abingdon did not discuss such subjects. She glanced at her key-basket and moved uneasily in her chair.