But Marjolaine never smiled. She moved as one who had no particular object in life. She drifted instinctively towards the river-bank although she knew that strain her eyes as she might the little boat she had looked for all the week was now less likely than ever to appear. At one moment she seemed almost inclined to speak to the Eyesore; to ask him whether he had seen what she had so long been vainly looking for. But the Eyesore was at that instant impaling a worm, and was altogether too revolting. She stood a moment looking up and down the stream, and then turned away with a great sigh. Mrs. Poskett’s great yellow cat, Sempronius, was curled up in the sun just behind the Gazebo. Marjolaine looked at him. She and he were fast friends, and in happier times she would have had a friendly word for him and an affectionate caress. To-day, even that was too much of an effort. Fortunately Sempronius was asleep and did not notice her inattention. Sir Peter Antrobus opened his upstair window and hung the osier cage with the thrush in it on its nail. He caught sight of the disconsolate little figure. "Missie, ahoy!" he roared, as though he were hailing a friendly craft in the offing. Marjolaine started. "Oh, Sir Peter! You made me jump!" "Sent a shot across your bows—what?" roared the Admiral. "How’s the thrush?" asked Marjolaine with an interest she did not feel. "Peaky. Peaky. That confounded cat next door’s been watching him. Seen him about anywhere?" Marjolaine pointed to where Sempronius was lying wrapped in innocent slumber. "He’s quite safe," she said. "There." But the Eyesore was between him and Sir Peter, and the latter had to twist himself into what was for so portly a gentleman a very unnatural position in order to see him. "Eh? Where?" "There," she answered, "there, behind the—" she was just going to say "Eyesore," but stopped herself in time. "Behind the Gazebo." "Oh, there! Well, if he moves I’ll kill him!" Marjolaine wondered. Could Sir Peter tell her what she so much wanted to know? Could he, at least, be brought to talk about what her heart was full of? "Sir Peter," she said, with as much of her old cheerfulness as she could summon, and with that pretty way of hers which no one could resist, "Are you very busy? Could you spare time for a little chat?" "With you?" cried the Admiral, gallantly. "Hours!" He vanished from the window and was heard tumbling down his stairs two at a time. I believe if he had been only a few years younger he would have slid down the balustrade. Jim told Jane later in the day he had never seen anything like it. Marjolaine waited for him under the elm, and pondered how she was to lead the conversation round to what she wanted to hear.