de, but it was not so dashed easy to get
there, for she was setting a cracking pace. At the top of the first
flight she must have led by a matter of half a dozen lengths, and was
still shaking off my challenge when she rounded into the second. At the
next landing, however, the gruelling going appeared to tell on her, for
she slackened off a trifle and showed symptoms of roaring, and by the
time we were in the straight we were running practically neck and neck.
Our entry into Anatole's room was as close a finish as you could have
wished to see.

Result:

1. _Aunt Dahlia._

2. _Bertram._

3. _Seppings._

_Won by a short head. Half a staircase separated second and third._

The first thing that met the eye on entering was Anatole. This wizard of
the cooking-stove is a tubby little man with a moustache of the outsize
or soup-strainer type, and you can generally take a line through it as to
the state of his emotions. When all is well, it turns up at the ends like
a sergeant-major's. When the soul is bruised, it droops.

It was drooping now, striking a sinister note. And if any shadow of doubt
had remained as to how he was feeling, the way he was carrying on would
have dispelled it. He was standing by the bed in pink pyjamas, waving his
fists at the skylight. Through the glass, Gussie was staring down. His
eyes were bulging and his mouth was open, giving him so striking a
resemblance to some rare fish in an aquarium that one's primary impulse
was to offer him an ant's egg.

Watching this fist-waving cook and this goggling guest, I must say that
my sympathies were completely with the former. I considered him
thoroughly justified in waving all the fists he wanted to.

Review the facts, I mean to say. There he had been, lying in bed,
thinking idly of whatever French cooks do think about when in bed, and he
had suddenly become aware of that frightful face at the window. A thing
to jar the most phlegmatic. I know I should hate to be lying in bed and
have Gussie popping up like that. A chap's bedroom--you can't get away
from it--is his castle, and he has every right to look askance if
gargoyles come glaring in at him.

While I stood musing thus, Aunt Dahlia, in her practical way, was coming
straight to the point:

"What's all this?"

Anatole did a sort of Swedish exercise, starting at the base of the
spine, carrying on through the shoulder-blades and finishing up among the
back hair.

Then he told her.

In the ch