is bad,
but beautiful. Aren't you, you most astonishing but attractive mammoth?"
This was addressed to Mrs. Gainsborough, who was at the moment panting
into the room for some accessory to the dining-table.

"Get along with you," the landlady chuckled. "Now don't go to sleep,
Lily. Your supper is just on ready." She went puffing from the room in
busy mirthfulness.

"She's one of the best," said Sylvia. "This house was given to her by an
old General who died about two years ago. You can see the painting of
him up in her bedroom as a dare-devil hussar with drooping whiskers. She
was a gay contemporary of the Albert Memorial. You know. Argyle Rooms
and Cremorne. With the Haymarket as the center of naughtiness."

It was funny, Michael thought, that his tobacconist should have
mentioned Cremorne only this afternoon. That he had done so affected him
more sharply now with a sense of the appropriateness of this house in
Tinderbox Lane. Appropriateness to what? Perhaps merely to the mood of
this foggy night.

"Supper! Supper!" Mrs. Gainsborough was crying.

It was dismaying for Michael to think that he had not kissed Lily yet,
and he wished that Sylvia would hurry ahead into the other room and give
him an opportunity. He wanted to pull her gently from that chair, up
from that chair into his arms. But Sylvia was the one who did so, and
she kissed Lily half fiercely, leaving Michael disconsolately to follow
them across the passage.

It was jolly to see Mrs. Gainsborough sitting at the head of the table
with the orange-shaded lamp throwing warm rays upon her countenance.
That it was near the chilly hour of one, with a cold thick fog outside,
was inconceivable when he looked at that cheery great porpoise of a
woman unscrewing bottles of India Pale Ale.

Michael did not want the questions about him and Lily to begin again. So
he turned the conversation upon a more remote past.

"Oh, my eye, my eye!" laughed Sylvia. "To think that Aunt Enormous was
once in the ballet at the Opera."

"How dare you laugh at me? Whoof!" Mrs. Gainsborough gave a sort of
muffled bark as her arm pounced out to grab Sylvia. The two of them
frisked with each other absurdly, while Lily sat with wide-open blue
eyes, so graceful even in that stiff chair close up to the table, that
Michael was in an ecstasy of admiration, and marveled gratefully at the
New Year's Day which could so change his fortune.

"Were you in the ballet?" he asked.

"Certainly