It always annoyed me when Fay quoted Frank, and especially when she did so in order to confute me. "I know, my darling; but Annabel thought it was." "I can't help Annabel's thoughts. She thought you were old!" I laughed, and patted the soft, white cheek so near to my own as we sat down side by side on a garden-seat. "No, she didn't, little one." "Well, anyway she said so." "No, she didn't. She said I was forty-three--which I am, and forty-three seems quite young to Annabel, though old to you." Fay still looked angry. "Indeed it doesn't. It seems quite young to me. And whatever it seems, I don't see the good of harping on it and rubbing it in, as Annabel is always doing. If she says 'forty-three' again, I shall say 'twopenny dam.'" I laughed outright. Fay was so delicious when she was annoyed, like a brilliant little bird with ruffled plumage. Then I said softly, as I put my arms round her slender waist: "No you won't, sweetheart, you'll never say it again, if it vexes Annabel. I want you and Annabel to love each other more than I want anything in the world." "More than you want you and me to love each other?" "That wish has been already fulfilled--by the greatest miracle that ever happened." Fay nestled closer to me. "It isn't very polite of you to say that your loving me is anything in the miracle line." "I didn't. It is in your loving me that the miracle comes in. I didn't set the dial ten degrees forward: you set it ten degrees backward." My wife looked up at me with laughter in her wonderful eyes. "And you want me to do the trick again with Annabel? Really, Reggie, that is a little bit too thick! And besides, she wouldn't like it. The dial of Annabel is quite a different make from the dial of Ahaz. It is one of those that can't be put back even five minutes without upsetting all the machinery and making the strikes go wrong, like our dining-room clock. And I wouldn't upset Annabel's machinery for worlds! I should feel like Cutler if I did." "And even Cutler didn't upset it this year, if I remember rightly." Fay shook her head. "No, the forget-me-not bed this last spring was the last word in forget-me-not beds. It was a thing of beauty and a joy for the end of April and quite the whole of May. I wanted to bathe in it, if you remember, but Annabel thought I might get drowned or something, and so I refrained." "Annabel has her funny little ways, I admit," I said, feeling that this was the moment for a word in season on my sister's behalf; "but she is the best and kindest woman in the world, and she is really devoted to you, my darling, though she doesn't always understand you." "She does not like me anything like as much as she likes Frank." "She really does--underneath her quiet manner; but she has always been a most undemonstrative woman," I persisted, feeling bound to defend my sister against an accusation of such arrant folly.