“I say, kid, I didn’t mean half of what I said just now, so you needn’t look so wretchedly serious. I rather appreciate having you in here, really. It’s some one to talk to while I’m putting on my stockings. And it really was quite decent of you to fix things up with Aunt Lavvy--though, mind you, I don’t believe she’d have told old Fennimore when it came to it. She was ruffled up the wrong way, but she’s rather an old darling, and frightfully fond of Hal and the rest of us.” [XIV] THE weather was not sufficiently self-conscious to clear up at precisely the same instant as the psychological clearing-up; but the day after, the sun flashed out, and the workman sang as he distempered Aunt Lavvy’s sitting-room, and the carrier’s boy whistled as he delivered her carpet and other packages from Whiteley’s furnishing department. And Hal and Nina and Bunny and Ursula and Maisie and Dorothy played their last tennis foursomes on the doctor’s asphalt court, taking turns to be the two out, because on Wednesday the boys were due back at Winborough. Hal was a great deal easier in his mind when he discovered that the blend of Maisie and Michaelmas daisies--though she played a jolly good game, and of course the daisies were all right in their way--yet did not make a second attempt to play any incomprehensible wizard trick with him which had resulted in the bad dream of the week-end just over. He was not quite comfortable yet, though, with his family, and consoled by the prospect of Winborough, where nobody except Bunny knew anything about his downfall; and, a term after that, Oxford, where nobody at all would know. By Jove! Supposing Aunt Lavvy had kept her word, and had spread the whole hateful business all over the place.... It was clever of that kid Ursula to have thought of a way to bribe her. Decent of her, too ... gratefully he served her with a soft ball, which she missed, because she was expecting a hard one. Hal and Maisie won their set against Ursula and Bunny. Then Hal and Dorothy played Nina and Bunny, and again Hal and his partner won. “Not one of you is any good at the net,” he pronounced at last. “And you ought to practise your backhand shots, Dorothy.”