The rain had not ceased for a moment, so there was good enough excuse for Mr Wooster's prolonged stay, but Dot was greatly astonished to see Larrie come up the path presently, and know it was half-past five. She excused herself and slipped out to meet him. He came in cold, wet, and cross. It struck him how bright Dot's face was and how exceedingly beautiful she was looking as she opened the door for him. 'I have a visitor here, Larrie,' she said in a whisper, 'be quick and get your mackintosh off. It is Mr Sullivan Wooster and he is so nice; don't stay to change your coat.' But 'Confound him!' said Larrie. He wanted Dot and Dot only just now. All the day he had had an unutterable longing to take her in his arms and beg her to let them start afresh, and make life a beautiful thing again. And now there was a visitor here. 'You must ask him to stay for dinner, of course,' Dot said. 'He's had pleurisy and can't go home in the rain. It's lucky there's roast fowl to-day, and I'll open a bottle of those apricots.' Larrie was sulkily taking off his mackintosh as she talked. 'What the deuce brought him here?' he said. Dot said 'H'sh,' and gave him a little poke to remind him of the proximity of the drawing-room. 'I'll tell you after,' she said. 'I must go back now, I've left him alone with baby, and perhaps he's not educated up to them.' He went kitchenward to ask for dry boots, and Peggie was dishing up. The appetising smell reminded him he was too hungry to tell her to keep things in the oven on the chance of the visitor going. And as he went back again up the hall he saw the weather was too abominable to turn a dog out. But he said 'Confound it' under his breath outside the door, as necessary preparation to pressing Mr Sullivan Wooster to stay to dinner. CHAPTER VII A POCKET MADAME MELBA 'Out of the day and night A joy has taken flight.' Larrie had not yet taken Dot in his arms as he had intended that afternoon, and he had not asked her to begin afresh, so the result was still 'dead level.' But Dot was no longer unhappy. Every minute of her time was filled, and with a real object now in life, she felt she had been childish to waste so many hours in weeping and dwelling on imaginary differences in Larrie's manner. She began to teach herself Italian with the aid of several grammars, text books, dictionaries, and Mr Wooster. She practised the most uninteresting vocal exercises with unwearied patience, and her perpetual singing of scales made Peggie take to a permanently closed kitchen door and remark in confidence to baby that his crying was music to it. All this because Mr Wooster, musical critic and composer, had told her that if her voice was carefully cultivated and lost none of its wonderful purity and freshness in the process, he did not know any singer in Australia she would not surpass, that her fame would be equal in time to Melba's or any of the first singers of the day.