"We were!" Pat assented with unction. "Especially yourself. Even as a child you played up to the gallery." He took her hand and squeezed it tightly between his own. "Pixie, I can't believe it! It's too nice to be true. And Bridgie, what does she say? Does she approve of your coming?" "She did one moment, and the next she didn't. She was torn in pieces, the poor darling, wanting to come to you herself, and to stay with Dick at the same time. You know what she is when Dick is ill! His temperature has only to go up one point, to have her weeping about Homes for Soldiers' Orphans, and pondering how she can get most votes. He's buried with military honours, poor Richard, every time he takes a cold. So I was firm with her, and just packed my things and came off. At my age," she straightened herself proudly, "one must assert oneself! I asked her what was the use of being twenty-two, and how she'd have liked it herself if she'd been thwarted at that age, and she gave in and packed up remedies." Pixie picked up the brown leather bag which lay on the floor, and opening it, took out the contents in turns, and laid them on the sofa. "A tonic to build up the system. Beef-juice, to ditto. Embrocation to be applied to the injured part. ... Tabloids. Home-made cake. ... Oh, that tea! I'd forgotten. I'll make it at once, and we'll eat the cake now." She jumped up and looked appealingly towards Stephen. "Will you show me the kitchen? I don't know my way through these lordly fastnesses!" They went out of the room together, while Pat called out an eager, "Don't be long!" It was only a step into the tiny kitchen. In another moment Stephen and Pixie stood within its portals, and she had closed the door behind with a careful hand. Her face had sobered, and there was an anxious furrow in her forehead. "He looks _ill_!" she said breathlessly. "Worse than I expected. He said he was getting well. Please tell me honestly--Is it _true_?" "Perfectly true in one sense. The knee is doing well, but his general health has suffered. He has been lonely and underfed, and at the first there was considerable pain. I did my best to make him write to you before, for he is not fit to be left alone. That servant is lazy and inefficient." Pixie glanced round the untidy room with her nose tilted high. "'Twill be a healthful shock for her to come back and find a mistress in possession. We'll have a heart to heart talk to-morrow morning," she announced, with so quaint an assumption of severity that Stephen was obliged to laugh. She laughed with him, struggling out of her coat, and looking round daintily for a place to lay it. "That nail on the door! There's not a clean spot. Now for the kettle! You fill it, while I rummage. What's the most unlikely place for the tea? It will be there. She's the sort of muddler who'd leave it loose among the potatoes." "It's in the caddy. The brown box on the dresser. I've found it before."