For the rest of that day there had been unprecedented excitement at No. 17, Wyatt Street. Until late that evening Elsie and Dora Bishop, in consultation with their mother, went into all the financial details of the undertaking. Little Maurice Priestly could sleep in the small room at the top of the house, used then as a box room. The smallness of the window in the sloping ceiling could easily be disguised by lace curtains at six three-farthings a yard. "Put that down," Mrs. Bishop had said; and the item of capital outlay had gone down on a half-sheet of note-paper. To Cailsham they had brought with them an old armchair convertible, at considerable risk to the fingers, into a shake-down bed. "We needn't buy a bed, then," said Mrs. Bishop. "No; but it'll need some sort of coverlet to make it look decent. I've seen them at Robinson's in the High Street for two and eleven-three." "Put that down," said Mrs. Bishop. By ten o'clock the list of expenses had been compiled. By eleven o'clock it was decided what would be the cost of board and lodging for an adult--a little being added on to that for visionary extras--soap, light, towels, and suchlike, less visionary than others, but extras nevertheless. When Mallins, the constable on night duty, passed down Wyatt Street at quarter-past eleven and saw a light in No. 17, he stopped in amazement and gazed through a chink in the old Venetian blind. "It's 'ard on that Mrs. Bishop," he said to his wife the next morning, "the way she 'as to work." That same morning a letter had been despatched to Mrs. Priestly, and by return of post came the reply-- "I suppose what you ask is quite reasonable. I am bringing Maurice to you the day after to-morrow." "Suppose!" said Elsie. "We couldn't do it for less," said Mrs. Bishop. "And the box room'll look really quite comfortable," Dora joined in. "I've just put the bed up. I never thought it was such a nice little room." Two days afterwards Mrs. Priestly and little Maurice had made their appearance. The slowest of the three flies in the town of Cailsham drove them up to the door and, for the moment, all work in the schoolroom had been suspended. The twenty sons of gentlemen, left to themselves, behaved as the sons of gentlemen--of any men, in fact-will do. There was an uproar in the schoolroom which Dora, before she had obtained a proper view of Mrs. Priestly from behind the door of the pantry at the end of the long hall, was compelled to go and reduce to silence. Having been deprived of the gratification of her curiosity, her effort had been with unqualified success. Between the ages of four and eight a boy can be quelled by a look. That look, the twenty sons of gentlemen received.