She was clasping a pale coral necklace round her throat when there came a tap at the door, followed by "May I come in?" and then Aunt Mary herself appeared. And such a radiant and smiling Aunt Mary that all Mollie's depression vanished in the twinkling of an eye. She hurried across the room and gave Mollie a hug. "Why--how pretty you have made yourself, Mollie darling. That is sweet of you, for I want you to look your very best this evening. I have a most astonishing piece of news for you--why do you laugh, you naughty girl? I don't see how you can possibly have guessed, and I am sure Grannie didn't tell you." Mollie laughed again as she returned her aunt's hug: "It was not so frightfully difficult to guess, after what you said about the green diamond ring yesterday--why, you have got it on! It _is_ lovely, isn't it? I think it is _just_ as beautiful--" Mollie stopped in some confusion, "I mean it is the loveliest ring I ever saw. If I ever get engaged I should like one exactly the same." "I hope it will bring you a little more luck than it brought us to begin with," Aunt Mary said, with a sigh, looking down at the hand which lay in Mollie's. "It is ten years since I got it, and if you had asked me yesterday I should have said it would perhaps be another ten before I could wear it like this, but all sorts of wonderful things happened all of a sudden and here we are! But I cannot understand why you guessed anything yesterday, you funny child. I am sure I said very little." "It wasn't what you _said_, it was how you _looked_. And you didn't hear yourself sighing, Aunt Polly-wolly-doodle. We were doing _As You Like It_ at school before I got measles, and we learnt something about people in love, I can tell you!" Mollie nodded her head wisely. "I am not romantic myself like the girl who was doing Rosalind, but I'm not _quite_ so blind as a bat is, and I came up with Major Campbell this afternoon." "Dear me!" Aunt Mary exclaimed with a laugh, "you are getting dreadfully grown-up, Mollie. I hope you don't--that you don't think my dear old Hugh is really old, because he happens to have rather white hair. It is the heart that counts, and his blessed old heart is as young as yours. Now I must run and dress. Call the boys and tell them to come in and be nice to their new uncle. You have simply _got_ to be friends." Half an hour later three exceedingly tidy and rather prim young people were formally introduced to "Uncle Hugh", who surveyed them gravely through a pair of gold-rimmed eyeglasses. Mollie was not sure whether a twinkle she thought she saw belonged to the eyes or to the glasses. "I could almost believe that he remembers the Time-travellers," she said to herself. But if he did he gave no further sign of it, nor could the children see much trace of the boy Hugh in this keen-eyed, white-haired, brown-skinned stranger.