‘Not a bit of it. Tell your brother that I’ve squared the militant Tim, and that he will turn up all right. What charming sweets, Bonnie! I love sweets; don’t you?’ He has made a sign to Miss Ricketty, who is now making up a splendid parcel. ‘Bonnie has had a cake,’ says Susan. She would have said a great deal more if Tommy had been in question. Indeed, then she would have refused distinctly; but Bonnie’s little lovely smiling face, and the joy she knows it will give the gentle child to share Mr. Crosby’s gift with his little brother, stops her. She says nothing more, though it is actual pain to her to have to accept these sweets for her brother from Crosby. It is a debt she owes to Bonnie to suffer thus. But, then, what does she not owe Bonnie? ‘L’appétit vient en mangeant,’ says Crosby. ‘Miss Ricketty, don’t be in such a hurry to tie up that parcel. Bonnie and I want something out of it first.’ He puts a delightful box of chocolate creams on Bonnie’s knee as he speaks, then turns to Susan. ‘I suppose I daren’t offer you anything,’ says he, in a low tone. Miss Ricketty becomes at once absorbed in a bottle of bull’s-eyes. ‘No,’ says Susan gently, ‘thank you.’ ‘Not even an apology?’ Susan glances quickly at him, and then hesitates. Perhaps she would have said something, but at this moment Miss Barry, with Betty and Dom and Carew, enter the shop. ‘We saw you through the window,’ cries Betty; and suddenly Susan’s thoughts run riot. Had he seen her through the window? ‘And so we came in. We must hurry, Susan; all the world is going to have its picture taken—even Lady Millbank, though goodness alone knows why. And such a guy as she looks in that velvet mantle—that heavy thing—’ ‘A regular overmantle,’ says Dom. ‘Bless me!’ says Miss Barry suddenly, breaking off her conversation with Miss Ricketty over the proper treatment of young fowls when they come to be three months old. ‘Susan, you and Betty are wearing the same frocks.’ ‘Yes, it was I who arranged that,’ says Betty calmly. ‘In some way, Susan and I have never worn these frocks together before, and I have heard that those old Murphy girls—’ ‘Not the Murphys, Betty—the Stauntons,’ says Susan. ‘It doesn’t matter; they are all old maids alike,’ says Betty lightly. ‘Any way, I have heard that some of the weird women of Curraghcloyne have said that we were short of clothes, because Susan and I had only one dress between us. This’—smoothing down her pretty serge frock—‘is the one in question. So I’m going to be photographed with Susan in it, if only to upset their theories, and give them some bad half-hours with their cronies; cronies never spare one.’ ‘You and Susan are going to be photographed together!’ says Miss Barry, who is getting a stormy look in her eyes. ‘You will not, then, be taken separately?’ ‘Oh yes,’ says Betty airily. ‘Separately, too. I hate double pictures as a rule, but when duty calls—’