, coming!" She stooped and
kissed the invalid affectionately. "Is there anything I can do for you
before I go? Is the window as you like it? Do you want a book or
anything handed to you?" While she spoke she was spreading the rug smooth
over the invalid's feet.

"Yes, dear, please if you will pass me that book and lower the blind a
little, I shall be able to read myself to sleep."

"Irene! Irene! are you coming?" a voice called up the stairs again.

"Run, dear, I must not keep you any longer. I am so comfortable now, with
everything put right."

"Good-bye then for the time," said Irene, smiling back brightly as she
stood at the door.

"Good-bye, little nurse. Try to enjoy yourself, dear; and thank you for
all you have done for me."

But, though she was so comfortable and 'had everything she wanted,'
Mrs. Carlyle did not fall asleep for a long while after the girls had left
her, but lay gazing thoughtfully before her, and more than once tears
shone in her eyes and fell on to her pillow.

"They are such darlings, too," she murmured at last, rousing herself with
a little shake, as though trying to shake off her thoughts. "They are
such dear children, it is wicked to wish them other than they are,
yet sympathy is very sweet; and--and understanding makes life very, very
pleasant."

CHAPTER IX.

"Debby! Tom! Are you ready? It is time to start." Dead silence.

"Audrey, ask Mary if she knows where they are, will you, please?"

Audrey walked away reluctantly. The whole party had collected just where
they could look right into the kitchen directly the door was open; and one
of the last things Audrey wanted, under the circumstances, was to open the
door, for she knew, only too well, the state the kitchen was in.
Instead of being neat and spotless, a place of gleaming copper and silvery
shining steel, of snowy wood and polished china, such as she would have
loved to display, it was all a hopeless muddle and confusion, a regular
'Troy Town' of a kitchen.

Perhaps she hoped she could make Mary hear without actually opening the
door; but it was a forlorn hope. Mary was generally afflicted with deep
deafness if one particularly wanted her hearing to be acute. She was now.
Audrey called again and again in vain.

"Open the door," suggested Mr. Carlyle, "she is probably rattling pans and
dishes and can't hear anything beyond."

"Put your head in and shout," suggested Faith, and Daphne and Keith
laughe