“Not gone yet, Cyril? Come, now, be a good lad, and get tucked up! The missis is still set on stopping behind, but I tell her she’ll only fuss you. I’ve got Lancaster persuaded to come, Dandy Anne! He hung fire for some time, talked about work and umpiring a hockey-match, but I made him promise to cry off and join us. I’m talking of to-morrow, Cyril. I had an idea at dinner. As you’re a bit under the wind, I’ve asked Lancaster to come along in your place.” Wiggie moved a few steps up the stair. “Glad you thought of it! And awfully glad he’ll go! He doesn’t give himself a day off very often. Hope you’ll have a first-class time, all the lot of you!” He glanced at Dandy, thrilling with a happy excitement she could not repress. (No, he had no right, there.) “Sleep well, Dandy Anne, and don’t worry your dear head. I’ll be as fit as ever, after my nice, quiet day.” Inside his silent lavender room with the rosy curtains, he found a well-groomed spink sitting on the rail of his bed. It cocked its head on one side when he closed the door behind him, and they surveyed each other with interest. Harriet had said that birds in your room meant disaster, and Harriet was always right. He had thought, for a moment--one crowned, delirious moment on the stair--that Harriet would not find him at her hockey-match, after all, but Fate did not mean him to fail her. Lancaster was going to the Show. Lancaster would have his place in the car. Very well! Let Lancaster have his Show and his seat, and his share of Life Everlasting. _He_ would have his five little minutes of the point-twist. He laughed aloud as he had done in the fields, scaring the bird from its perch, and after a minute or two he caught it deftly in his thin fingers. How frail it felt! he thought, as he opened the window and tossed it lightly into the night. Would the Almighty find him just so, he wondered--a piteous, frightened heart beating the walls of its fragile tenement--when His Fingers closed softly round him for the last, light fling into the Dark? CHAPTER XX WIGGIE’S FIVE MINUTES