"I'll try and keep sensible, but there is Christmas, and January, and February. Oh, Mary, I shall never do it," cried Boodles. "I shall be mad before March, which is the proper time for madness."
"Get another maid to come and bide wi' ye," Mary suggested.
"How can I?"
"Mebbe some old dame, who wants a home—" began Mary.
"She would be an expense, and she might get drunk, rob me, beat me, perhaps."
"Her wouldn't," declared Mary, with a glance at her big stick.
"I must go on being alone and making believe," said Boodles.
"Won't the butiful young gentleman come and live wi' ye?" said poor Mary, quite thinking she had found a splendid way out of the difficulty.
"Silly old thing," sighed Boodles, actually smiling. Then she rose to go, and Mary tramped heavily to her dairy. "Tak' eggs and butter wi' ye," she called. "Aw, my dear, yew mun't starve, or you'll get decline. 'Tis cruel to go abroad on an empty stomach."
"I'm not a snake," said Boodles; and at that moment Peter appeared in search of thoughts, heard the conversation, agreed that it was indeed cruel to go abroad on an empty stomach, and went to record the statement in his diary, adding for the sake of a light touch the observation of Boodles that she was not a snake, though Peter could not see the joke.