she had sent to sleep
with children's stories. She wondered which was real, which he had been
when he was well.

"I must go now and have something out with Mrs. Clancy," she said,
smiling and rising. "She's perfectly certain carpets have to come up
when you put down mattings, and I'm perfectly certain they don't."

She tucked the despised list, to which she had furtively added her
bull-pup, into her sleeve, took her hand from his and went away. It
seemed to Allan that the room was a little darker.

IX

Outside the sitting-room door stood Wallis, who had been lying in wait.

"I wanted to explain, madam, about the plans," he said. "It worries Mr.
Allan. You see, madam, the late Mrs. Harrington was a great one for
plans. She had, if I may say so, a new one every day, and she'd argue
you deaf, dumb, and blind--not to speak ill of the dead--till you were
fair beat out fighting it. Then you'd settle down to it--and next day
there be another one, with Mrs. Harrington rooting for it just as hard,
and you, with your mouth fixed for the other plan, so to speak, would
have to give in to that. The plan she happened to have last always went
through, because she fought for that as hard as she had for the others,
and you were so bothered by then you didn't care what."

Wallis's carefully impersonal servant-English had slipped from him, and
he was talking to Phyllis as man to man, but she was very glad of it.
These were the sort of facts she had to elicit.

"When Mr. Allan was well," he went on, "he used to just laugh and say,
'All right, mother darling,' and pet her and do his own way--he was
always laughing and carrying on then, Mr. Allan--but after he was hurt,
of course, he couldn't get away, and the old madam, she'd sit by his
couch by the hour, and he nearly wild, making plans for him. She'd spend
weeks planning details of things over and over, never getting tired. And
then off again to the next thing! It was all because she was so fond of
him, you see. But if you'll pardon my saying so, madam"--Wallis was
resuming his man-servant manners--"it was not always good for Mr.
Allan."

"I think I understand," said Phyllis thoughtfully, as she and the
wolfhound went to interview Mrs. Clancy. So that was why! She had
imagined something of the sort. And she--she herself--was doubtless the
outcome of one of Mrs. Harrington's long-detailed plans, insisted on to
Allan till he had acquiesced for quiet's sake! ... But he said