"I'm putty in Gertrude's hands," he continued solemnly, "as I should have been in yours. It's no kind of use saying I ought not to be putty. I know I ought not, but putty I am. You don't know what marriage is like. No peace unless you give in entirely--no terms--no half-way house, no nothing except unconditional surrender." I had never heard Jimmy speak like this before. I put in a layer of pinks, and then looked at him again. There were tears in his eyes. "My dear old soul," he burst out, "I can't help it, I _cannot_ help it. She insisted on my coming down and telling you myself. She said it must come from me, as my own idea, and I'm not to mention her at all. The truth is--she has decided--and nothing will move her--that it will be best if Joan and Bobby Wilson lived quite near us for a time as they are both so young--in fact--" his voice became hoarse--"in this cottage." "_My_ cottage!" I said. "_Here!_" He nodded. For a moment I could neither see nor hear. My brain reeled. I clutched at something which turned out to be Jimmy's hand. "My own little house," I gasped. "My garden, made with my own hands. The only place my rheumatism--" I choked. "Don't take on so, Anne," but it was Jimmy who was crying, not I, "I'll find something else for you. Miss Jones is leaving Banff. You shall have her house rent free. I hate it all just as much as you. It makes me sick to think of chicken hutches on your lawn; but, but--you _shouldn't_ have outwitted Gertrude." "She told me there was no movement, no journey of any kind in my horoscope," I groaned. "She says she made a mistake, and that she sees now there is a long journey. Dulcie told her so some time ago, but she would not hear of it. But now she has worked it out again, and she says Dulcie was right after all. You are plum in the thick of Uranian upheavals." "And is Dulcie's marriage a mistake, too?" "She said nothing about that. But, between ourselves, Anne, though I'm not an astrologer, I should not count on it too much, for I've been making a few enquiries about Vavasour, and I find he has been engaged four times already. It's a sort of habit with him to get engaged, and his mother never opposes him, but she has a sort of habit of gently getting him out of it--every time." * * * * * All this took place several years ago. I live in the suburbs of Banff now in Miss Jones's old house. As there is no garden that kind Jimmy has built me a little conservatory sticking like a blister to the unattached wall of my semi-detached villa. He sends me a hamper of vegetables every week, and Joan presents me with a couple of chickens now and then, _reared on my lawn_.