It was the very next day that Mother got ill, and that made us forget about the Crespignys and everything. Mother isn’t very strong, and she often has to stay in bed, but this was much worse than usual and we weren’t allowed to see her for days. The one nice thing was that Fräulein was in with Mother nearly all the time, so there was nobody to bother us and we could do lots of nice things. We children used even to have tea alone; we did like it. I used to pour out, and there were no fines or anything if we spilt things on the cloth. Certainly it did get into rather a mess, but that was mostly because Humphrey would drink his milk up a bit of macaroni like the gentlemen do at Father’s club, only they use a straw. Cook was so nice too, she used to send us up hot buttered toast, and it was all most lovely, except, of course, Mother’s being ill, which spoilt everything. That was almost too horrid to bear, especially when one went to bed. It was the night that cook was kindest of all and gave us real tea, that Violet wasn’t there. I remember it quite well, because we were so astonished to see cook bringing up the teapot instead of our just having a jug of milk, but she said a drop would liven us up in a house of trouble. It is a pity cook can’t always live in houses of trouble, it makes her so much nicer. Humphrey was particularly pleased, because he said he’d always been wanting to try an experiment of putting the milk and sugar into the pot and drinking out of the spout in turns. I couldn’t let him do it though until after we’d had first cups, else there wouldn’t have been any honour in my being Pourer Out at all. We’d been wondering where Violet was ever since tea came, for generally she’s the only one of us who is punctual except Teddy, and Fräulein washes his hands so he can’t help it. I thought she couldn’t know, so at last I sent Humph to tell her, though he was rather cross and would only go after we’d said three times “Certain true, black and blue, lay me down and cut me in two,” that we wouldn’t touch his toast. We didn’t like to shout for Violet, you see, because of Mother. Well, Humph was gone a long time, because he always takes longer over everything than you’d think a person possibly could, and when he came back he said he couldn’t find Violet. I wasn’t surprised at that and I went myself expecting that I’d see her directly, but I didn’t. I hunted everywhere, but I couldn’t find any sign of her, until at last when I went into our bedroom again, I noticed that the string had been taken off the box in which her new dress had come from the dressmaker’s. I opened it, and her new dress had gone, so had her best hat and coat! We remembered then that we hadn’t seen her all the afternoon. It was most astonishing.