Betwixt the stirrup and the ground She mercy sought, she mercy found.... Now where did that come from? she asked herself distractedly, nervously passing one hand over her already perfectly tidy hair and opening the door with the other. There was Wemyss, opening Lucy's door at the same moment. 'Oh how do you do, Everard,' said Miss Entwhistle, advancing with all the precipitate and affectionate politeness of one who is greeting not only a host but a nephew. 'Quite well thank you,' was Everard's slightly unexpected reply; but logical, perfectly logical. She held out her hand and he shook it, and then proceeded past her to her bedroom door, which she had left open, and switched off the light, which she had left on. 'Oh I'm sorry,' said Miss Entwhistle. 'That,' she thought, 'is one to Everard.' She waited for his return, and then walked, followed by him in silence, down the stairs. 'How do you find Lucy?' she asked when they had got to the bottom. She didn't like Everard's silences; she remembered several of them during that difference of opinion he and she had had about where Christmas should be spent. They weighed on her; and she had the sensation of wriggling beneath them like an earwig beneath a stone, and it humiliated her to wriggle. 'Just as I expected,' he said. 'Perfectly well.' 'Oh no--not perfectly well,' exclaimed Miss Entwhistle, a vision of the blue-wrapped little figure sitting weakly up against the pillows that afternoon before her eyes. 'She is better to-day, but not nearly well.' 'You asked me what I thought, and I've told you,' said Wemyss. No, it wouldn't be an impulsive affection, hers and Everard's, she felt; it would, when it did come, be the result of slow and careful preparation,--line upon line, here a little and there a little. 'Won't you go in?' he asked; and she perceived he had pushed the dining-room door open and was holding it back with his arm while she, thinking this, lingered. 'That,' she thought, 'is another to Everard,'--her second bungle; first the light left on in her room, now keeping him waiting. She hurried through the door, and then, vexed with herself for hurrying, walked to her chair with almost an excess of deliberation. 'The doctor----' she began, when they were in their places, and Chesterton was hovering in readiness to snatch the cover off the soup the instant Wemyss had finished arranging his table-napkin. 'I wish to hear nothing about the doctor,' he interrupted. Miss Entwhistle gave herself pains to be undaunted, and said with almost an excess of naturalness, 'But I'd like to tell you.' 'It is no concern of mine,' he said. 'But you're her husband, you know,' said Miss Entwhistle, trying to sound pleasant. 'I gave no orders,' said Wemyss. 'But he had to be sent for. The child----' 'So you say. So you said on the telephone. And I told you then you were taking a great deal on yourself, unasked.'