'You won't be afraid of me, will you?' asks Mabel, 'and you will love me very soon, I hope.'
'Ses,' is the answer, 'but I must love Mummy still.'
'Yes, dear, of course,' is the answer, 'Mummy, as you call her, is coming to see me this afternoon.'
Teddy has been watching from the distance, his nose has been altogether put out of joint, and it is rather a melancholy freckled face that Philippa catches sight of.
'Why, Teddy,' she says, 'come here and tell me what you were doing all the morning, and oh, Jimmy,' she says, turning to her husband, 'do be an angel and take baby back to the nursery, Mabel is so engrossed with Lilian.'
'Come along then, old woman,' and Jimmy lifts up his niece, 'but I say, Lippa, don't you think it would be just as well to be out of the way when Paul comes.'
'Perhaps it would,' answers she, 'and you had better take Teddy with you as well.'
Jimmy has just turned the corner of the house, when he runs straight into Paul and the lady he saw in the train.
There is no time to retreat, so he says, 'How do you do?' and the baby puts further conversation out of the question, by beginning to howl, Jimmy in the bottom of his heart feels thankful for it, though aloud he says, 'I must depart with this tiresome person, come along Teddy.'
The baby deposited in the nursery, he keeps out of the way till tea-time, when he finds them all seated round a table still in the garden.