"Aunt Azraella has a cold, Rob; it isn't serious, but she is nursing it. I think it would be as well if you and Wythie would go up there after tea. And Charlotte looked tired. I fear it is too much for her to go on keeping house there, now that she is alone. The dear soul clings to her life-long home, but without some one besides Annie to look after her it seems to me unsafe for her to live there," said Mrs. Grey, looking anxious. "Why, what did Hester say, Rob? I forgot to ask you?" "And you may well ask!" cried Rob, springing to her feet. "How could I forget to tell you? She says that she wants to bring her favourite cousin here to-morrow, and that if she doesn't hear from us to the contrary she will assume that it is all right to do so, and come." "Her cousin? What cousin is it? Does she mean to stay with us, or merely to call? asked Mrs. Grey with a quick mental outlook over the domestic conditions for guests. "To lunch only," said Rob, looking over her letter. "The cousin is that Lester Baldwin of whom she has talked so much. He is named after her father, with the John dropped. He is young--twenty something--and has been in Japan for three years. Hester thinks there never was such a boy. When we wave our Battalion B in her face and she praises them, you can see her reserving her opinion of Lester. We shall let them come, Mardy?" "Oh, yes, of course," said that motherly woman. "It is curious, but with all her advantages I feel as though I must do everything I can to make Hester happy." "She just escaped being morbid," said Wythie rising. "Frances, you will excuse me if I leave you to Rob and baby Prue, and go to look over the pantry? There is time for one of us to go down again with orders if there is anything that we must have for the lunch to-morrow. Suppose I go down with orders, and stop at Aunt Azraella's, Mardy? Then Rob won't have to go." "You forget that I am now the favourite niece, Wythie dear," said Rob. "But go if you will, and try to usurp that proud position; I will never upbraid you." Wythie smiled her quiet smile and left the room. Just beyond the door she met with Kiku-san, grown into a mountain of a cat, but more clingingly kittenfied and dependent than ever. Wythie swung him to her shoulder just as she had always done since he had come to them, a white down-ball with pink trimmings, and continued her way to the kitchen to interview Lydia. Lydia was the young woman who had come to preside over that department when the sale of the bricquette machine patent had made it possible for the Greys to have some one to help them in the tiresome routine of housework.