"_So_ selfish! Noise like earthquakes every time they rake. I wake every morning thinking I'm dead. This morning I counted sixty separate rakes! Now, here's a problem for you, Mr Glynn--How can you avenge yourself on an upstairs flatter? If it's below: it's quite easy--you just bang with the poker; but how can you do that on your own ceiling? 'Tis no consolation to break the plaster!" The tea was carried in as she spoke, and she rose to seat herself at the table, giving a friendly smile at the trim maid who had replaced the arrant "housekeeper." "Hot scones, Moffatt? You _do_ spoil us!" she said cordially, and the girl left the room abeam with content. "She adores me--all maids do," announced Pixie, with her complacent air well to the fore. "It's the way I treat them. My sister, now--Bridgie Victor--she's a coward with her maids. She lies awake half the night rehearsing the best ways of hinting that she'd prefer pastry lighter than lead, after begging us all as a personal favour to eat it in case cook should be hurt. When I have a house--" She stopped short and busied herself with her duties, and neither of her listeners questioned her further on the subject. Tea was a merry meal, and Pat consumed the dainty fare with undisguised enjoyment. "That's the pull of an accident," he declared, as he helped himself to a third scone, "_ye can eat_! It's awful to think of poor beggars on a diet. ... Let's have muffins to-morrow, Pixie, _swimming_ with butter. Glynn's coming!" "Don't tempt me! I am coming to lunch, but you won't want me to stay on." "Rubbish! We _do_. Stay for the whole day, and Pixie shall sing to us. It's the least she can do, if you take her to church." Stephen looked at his hostess with a glance curiously compounded of dread and expectation. Music was the passion of his life, so true a passion that it was torture to him to hear the travesties which passed under its name. Bearing in mind the very small proportion of girls who could really sing, he wished that the proposal had never been made, since the result would probably mean a jarring episode in a delightful day. "But you have no piano," he said uncertainly. "How can--"