Dot sprang up the verandah steps, and went into the bedroom to take off her hat, and wash invisible gardening marks from her fingers. 'I won't quarrel,' she whispered to herself, 'but I must really show him I am not to be bullied. I will be _very_ firm.' 'Googul' said baby. Such a mournful little googul! there were actually two tiny tears welling up in the blue wide eyes, for tossing and petting were joyful to him. Dot shut the door. Then she said '_Baby_' in a tempestuous little way, and two quick answering tears sprang up in her own eyes as she lifted him up to her. It was such a lonely, reproachful little 'googul.' She sat down on the bed with him, and made his small heart gladsome again with kisses and baby-talk. The door opened one inch--then wide. 'The curry coolin' as 'ard as it can, and master lookin' black, and 'ere you are,' said Peggie resentfully. 'Give 'im to me, the darling angel.' Dot handed him over, and hurried into the dining-room. 'You're putting milk in, what are you thinking of?' Larrie said in an injured tone after two minutes' silence. Dot was actually thus spoiling the cup of tea he always drank brown and sugarful. Peggie had forgotten the slop basin. Dot got up to go to the cupboard which was near Larrie's end of the table. 'If you'll never be naughty again I'll forgive you,' she said in a whisper at his elbow. Her eyes were wet, sorry, pleading. 'You _dear_ little girl,' Larrie said. He laid down his knife and fork and put his arms round her waist, 'I was a perfect brute to you, it was all my fault.' 'No, mine,' said Dot. '_Mine_,' insisted Larrie. CHAPTER V MORE RIFTS IN THE LUTE 'This grew: I gave commands, Then all smiles stopped together.' But naturally this kind of thing could not go on for ever. Quarrels, with little tender makings up like that had a certain charm while their freshness lasted. But when the fallings out became events of almost weekly occurrence, the fallings in were no longer things to be put away in 'the hushed herbarium where we keep our hearts' forget-me-nots.' Larrie _was_ exacting and inclined to be tyrannical. And Dot _was_ careless and childish, and unreasonable. The first week that the mother did not come down to look after Peggie, and do her fifty odd acts of straightening, the cottage was in a glorious state of muddle. Larrie by nature was an order-loving and somewhat methodical man, and had an inborn objection to see Dot's pretty slippers lying about the house, or stray articles of baby's clothing on the verandah chairs. He thought breakfast things too ought not to be left on the table till all hours in the morning, and when Dot asked him how he could expect Peggie to dress baby and make the beds _and_ wash up by ten, he retorted brutally that she was a lazy little slattern, and should do it herself. 'A slattern is a person untidy in herself,' Dot replied, 'you can't say you've ever seen me like that, Laurence Armitage!'