“I was quite sure, somehow, that it had gone up to your room. I was going to ask you if I might help you unpack.” “Where did you leave it, Aunt Lavvy?” “At Gullick Station, till called for. Don’t look so worried, my dear children; of course I couldn’t expect a car to meet me, when I arrive twelve hours before I am expected. I was just wondering how I should cover the ten miles to St. Miniot, when a charming old gentleman with white hair--a General, I think he said, but I have his card--sent me a message by the porter----” The episode of old-world courtesy to a gentlewoman in distress, acquired, in the telling, that typical Watteau atmosphere which seemed conveniently to attend Aunt Lavvy wherever she went. Even the Gullick porter was translated. Briefly, the General had offered her a lift out in his own car; but his wife’s luggage was so voluminous that Aunt Lavvy’s trunk could not be squeezed in--“And so I wondered, Ursula darling, if you were driving out to Gullick anyhow this evening, for stores, would you mind calling at the station and bringing it back with you? But not if----” “Of course Teddy will!” Doug promised, settling the matter. “Quite a good notion of yours about stores, Teddy. Don’t forget a few tins of tunah-fish. I like it. They called it tunny-fish once, but during the war and the food shortage it went up in social tone. Tunah-fish!” “Tunah-fish!” echoed Chris, haughtily. “We’ll all rattle in with you to Gullick, if you like?” Doug suggested further to Louis, who, without a flicker of an eyelid, murmured that he would be honoured by their united company. “Bounder!” thought Doug, for the fifteenth time. “With you and your luggage to go in, Louis, and Mrs. Barrison, and Champion driving, and a fresh lot of luggage and Mrs. Barrison and stores to go back, I should think you’d be as full as you can manage,” Miss Gregson said. Louis was aware that this argument was so obvious that he could safely acquiesce in Doug’s proposal, and leave somebody else to point it out. “Will there at least be room for my empty suitcase, going out?” Ursula asked of Louis. “To bring it home full of tunah-fish? Oh, yes, I think it can be managed. And if no trains run up to town tonight?” Dangerously he aimed his last question full at her; and dangerously she answered him: “Oh--chance it!” Louis got up to go. He said he would call for her. He said he must pack. He said that he had been delighted to meet Aunt Lavvy. He did not say that knowing now all he wanted to know, there was no further reason to prolong the visit. [VIII]