They shouted with joy at his wild plunges after the kipper, and when he at last held it proudly aloft, minus a tail, and scorched and shrivelled into a sprat, it was met with a torrent of rude remarks. Ted handed Molly his own kipper with an air of offended pride; in vain she protested. "Here—catch, old man!" Denis flung a fresh kipper to him. "The burnt one will do for your second help!" And sure enough it did. Ted found kippers, cooked by himself and eaten for tea, so good that he ate up every blackened bit of the luckless burnt fish, and declared he regretted the lost tail. He looked round on the scorched cheeks and smiled benignly. "Isn’t it good?" he said, with the simplicity that made Nell so fond of him. "Oh, Ted, what a dear old man you will make some day!" "Cantankerous old beast, I think!" observed Denis. "Isn’t it funny that things one cooks one’s self are always so much nicer than kitchen-cooked things?" reflected Molly. "But I wish I hadn’t cooked my nose quite so much." "A cape is a promontory projecting from the land," suddenly declaimed Denis, and they all laughed. "Ware noses!" exclaimed Ted, tenderly fingering his own. "I like big noses," Sheila Pat said thoughtfully. "There’s a more—sort of—_understandin’_ look about them—for boys." "Acushlum, _what_ made you think of big noses just then?" he urged reproachfully. "Let’s play hide-and-seek all over the house!" exclaimed Molly. Sheila Pat slid from her chair. "The benighted Englishman shall be seeker first!" she decreed, and with a little squeal of laughter darted from the room. *CHAPTER XXVI* "Seen any Irish pictures?" Ted’s tone was labouredly casual. They were talking about the various picture galleries they had revelled in. Nell turned a suspicious eye on him; she was beginning to know that casual tone. He had used it when he had suggested that Denis might exercise Rowena for him—"Pity to let her eat her head off in the stable, and I’m off for the day to a cousin who’s passing through town on her way to Paris." He had used it too in connection with flowers and sweets, and on appearing in a dog-cart one day had observed—"Struck me—room for all—squeeze acushlum in anywhere—pity to waste it." So now Nell responded with a "Why?" "Oh, nothing. I was thinking—chap sent me tickets for private show—pity to waste ’em—Neil O’Donoghue’s pictures, you know—" "Oh, Ted, the Irish landscape man?" He nodded. "Teddie, you angel! Oh, I’ll use your tickets. There’s no false modesty about me, when you hold out a bait like that! Can we go now—_now_?" "Rather! Look here, Nell, you—I mean you _will_ let me— Jolly place just close by—give you ripping luncheons! You will all come, won’t you?" "Oh! Well, you know—" "Oh, I say, be a brick, Nell!" She laughed out.