dness of his crackling.

"Do you mean they don't live here?" asked Anna-Felicitas, in her turn
disentangling herself from that which was still inside the taxi, and
immediately followed on to the pavement by the hold-all and the
_attache_ case.

"They did live here till yesterday," said the boy, "but now they don't.
One does. But that's not the same as two. Which is what I meant when you
said they're expecting you and I said they ain't."

"Do you mean to say--" Anna-Rose stopped with a catch of her breath. "Do
you mean," she went on in an awe-struck voice, "that one of them--one of
them is dead?"

"Dead? Bless you, no. Anything but dead. The exact opposite. Gone.
Left. Got," said the boy.

"Oh," said Anna-Rose greatly relieved, passing over his last word, whose
meaning escaped her, "oh--you mean just gone to meet us. And missed us.
You see," she said, turning to Anna-Felicitas, "they did try to after
all."

Anna-Felicitas said nothing, but reflected that whichever Sack had tried
to must have a quite unusual gift for missing people.

"Gone to meet you?" repeated the boy, as one surprised by a new point of
view. "Well, I don't know about that--"

"We'll go up and explain," said Anna-Rose. "Is it Mr. or Mrs. Clouston
Sack who is here?"

"Mr.," said the boy.

"Very well then. Please bring in our things." And Anna-Rose proceeded,
followed by Anna-Felicitas, to walk into the house.

The boy, instead of bringing them in, picked up the articles lying on
the pavement and put them back again into the taxi. "No hurry about
them, I guess," he said to the driver. "Time enough to take them up when
the gurls ask again--" and he darted after the gurls to hand them over
to his colleague who worked what he called the elevator.

"Why do you call it the elevator," inquired Anna-Felicitas, mildly
inquisitive, of this boy, who on hearing that they wished to see Mr.
Sack stared at them with profound and unblinking interest all the way
up, "when it is really a lift?"

"Because it is an elevator," said the boy briefly.

"But we, you see," said Anna-Felicitas, "are equally convinced that it's
a lift."

The boy didn't answer this. He was as silent as the other one wasn't;
but there was a thrill about him too, something electric and tense. He
stared at Anna-Felicitas, then turned quickly and stared at Anna-Rose,
then quickly back to Anna-Felicitas, and so on all the way up. He was
obviously extraordinarily interested. He seemed