Hat in hand, he greeted them. "You’ll let me carry those parcels, Miss O’Brien?" "No, thanks." "Please let me; and you’ll let me carry yours, too," to Molly, "won’t you?" "Thank you," said Molly, shyly. "Good for you, old chap! I did my best, but I’ve only one pair of arms, don’t you know," observed Denis. "Newspaper parcels seem incongruous with you, somehow," said Nell, unkindly. He flushed up. "Hand ’em over, Nell!" said Denis, frowning. "Don’t keep us all standing here!" Nell walked on quickly. "I like to carry them myself." Ted spoke to Sheila Pat. "Gigantic Atom, I bet anything you, too, prefer to carry your own parcels?" She nodded. "But I’d like to hold your arm." "Honoured, I’m sure." Laboriously she freed her right hand and tucked it, and a lamb that had escaped from a parcel, beneath his arm. Nell had grown penitent. She turned a charming and rather pink cheek towards him. "I’m tired of carrying my parcels," she said plaintively. "You’ll let me? _Thanks_!" They told him of their morning’s shopping, and he listened with absorbed interest. Then Nell, who hated to have a grievance hidden away, brought hers out reproachfully. "I do think it was awfully nasty of you to go away and forget I was keeping a place for you the other night." He promptly dropped a parcel. "Forget!" he exclaimed, standing on Noah, and surrounded by his relations and his horses and his cows and his elephants and his trees. "Why, Pennington took my place!" "Oh, but that was only till you should come back." "Fool!" he muttered savagely, and kicked Noah’s aunt. "Be careful, boy!" shrilled the Atom, who was picking up Noah and his impedimenta. "Sorry!" He stooped and helped her. "So," said Mistress Nell, "you thought I broke my word!" "I—I’m awfully sorry. I thought you’d forgotten." "I never forget a promise." "No, of course not! That is—I mean—I thought—hang it all, I was an idiot!" He flung Noah’s patriarchal oak into the box. "But when I saw that fool of a Pennington—" "He’s not a fool. I don’t see why you should call him names. And hadn’t you better hurry? We’re obstructing the pavement." "This—er—lady in the blue dressing-gown won’t go in." "I’ll take her," volunteered the Atom. Nell looked down into his face and laughed. "Oh, that’s all right!" he exclaimed, relieved. "I say," Denis and Molly reappeared, coming back to look for them, "aren’t you ever coming?" Ted, once more clasping the newspapered Noah’s ark and other toys to the bosom of his fashionable coat, walked on. "Been to a concert with my aunt and cousins," he volunteered to Denis. "Like it?" He frowned. "I like going to concerts alone," he observed ungallantly. And Nell dimpled, as she mentally drew pictures. He could not come in with them, as he was due somewhere else, but the real regret in his face and voice prompted them to insist that he should come very soon. Up in the Stronghold Sheila Pat turned to Denis.