"Well, she got lost so very--er--noiselessly," apologized John, "that it escaped our attention. But she doesn't look as if it had worn on her much," he added, brightening. "It didn't," Phyllis answered with an irrepressible laugh, "it wore on us! I expect Allan's still hunting the grounds over for her--he and the gardener. The gardener always uses a wooden rake with a pillow tied to its teeth." Allan entered at one of the long windows as she spoke. "Oh, you found her," he remarked. "I thought she wouldn't have been out of the house." "Where was she?" demanded Philip, John, and Joy in a polite chorus, surrounding the center of attraction, who slept on. "Under the guest-room bed," said Phyllis, putting her daughter down on a couch as she spoke, and going over to the table, where she struck the bell for soup, and sat down. "I crawled under," interjected Mrs. Hewitt proudly, looking every inch a duchess as she said it, "and there she was! She had eaten every bit of cheese from the set mousetrap under it; I forgot to tell you, Phyllis." "Good gracious!" said Phyllis as the rest sat down about the table.... "Well, if it hasn't hurt her so far, it mayn't at all. I'm not going to wake her out of a seraphic slumber like that just to ask her if she has a pain." "You don't let _me_ eat cheese at night," said Philip aggrievedly here, looking up from his plate. "And I knew that mousetrap was there, and I never touched a scrap of it. It was set the day we went away from the chickenpox." "You're a very high-minded child," said his father soothingly. "And there's charlotte russe for your dessert, Master Philip," whispered the waitress: at which Philip forgot his wrongs and brightened visibly. The meal went on rather silently after this, because everybody was rather hungry. Philip grew drowsier and drowsier, till Viola stole in and led him away, "walking asleep." The grown people went on talking and laughing around the table. "With nobody to hush them so he could make a literary criticism," Joy thought happily. Mrs. Hewitt tore herself away with obvious reluctance, about ten or so, taking John with her. After that Phyllis said that she was sleepy, but not to let that make anybody else feel they had to be sleepy, too. Joy had been holding her eyelids up by main force for some time, because she hadn't wanted to miss any of the talk and laughter and delightful feeling of being grown up and in the midst of things. So she went up to bed, almost as drowsily as Philip had before her.