Cissy, piteously damp, confessed that she had been once as far as Polpinnock Cove, in a school treat. It was a great event to her. But, in spite of Christine’s laughing expostulations, she continued to shed tears over the breakdown of England’s railway system. Perhaps the manner of Mr. Wright’s entrance and exit had shaken her nerves. “It must all wait,” Ursula said to herself, when she had recaptured control over her disappointment. After all, if she and Louis could not go, neither could Aunt Lavvy come. The next morning, on her way back from the village, whither she had been in a vain attempt to obtain certain news of the strike, Ursula was met by Christine racing along the grassy track from Grey Stone. “I say, what do you think? A perfectly darling old lady has arrived. She says you invited her. She came by the night train instead of waiting till today, in case the strike started before it was expected. Old Wright was twenty-four hours wrong in his news--it’s tonight, not yesterday night, that the last trump sounds and all the engine-drivers throw down their spanners or whatever it is they use. I say, Ursula, why didn’t you tell us you’d ask her? Did you mean it for a surprise? I simply worship her already. She’s not really your aunt, is she? And where is she going to sleep?” Doug, when he returned from the farm, for lunch, promptly settled the final question: “Lucky I had that bunk fixed up in my cabin, isn’t it, Teddy? Only a glorified shelf on hinges, of course, but I can doss there perfectly well.... Oh, that’s all right, Aunt Lavvy--may I call you that? Good! That’s all right, I’m an old campaigner. And then you and Teddy can share, and Chris can stop in the little end room. It’s rather too cramped, isn’t it, Teddy, for any one but an infant?” (“And I like to think of you in that room, Chris ...” he told her afterwards.) Ursula’s fleet resolve was to carry out her plan now, strike or no strike. She and Louis must make a dash for it. Perhaps some volunteer trains would be run. At all events, she could not remain at Grey Stone, sharing quarters with Aunt Lavvy. Aunt Lavvy, Chris and Doug, and herself--what an incongruous house-party in Arcadia! With emotions and purposes as fierce, as overlapping and as secret as they had once been in the tightly packed Laburnums. And the railway strike ringing them in without means of escape. “And _I_ invited Christine, and _I_ invited Aunt Lavvy. What makes me do these goblin things? I don’t care, I must see Louis and tell him. I’ll chance it. Let him think I’m desperate for love of him.”