"Anyway Lal couldn't sail, could he?" queried Christine.
"You don't know how he might come," whispered Ridgwell. "He might even come in a motor car, and anyway it's only so that other people shan't understand."
"It seems to me," remarked Christine logically, "that people won't understand him anyway, and less when they see him than when they don't."
"It's an anxious time, isn't it, Chris?"
"Very," assented Christine, "and anyhow we shall have to drop Cookie a hint, because you see her window in the kitchen looks over a part of the garden that we can't see from the drawing-room."
"Of course," mused Ridgwell, "the weak spot about Cookie is that she gets shocks so quickly."
"She's sure to get one to-day," commenced Christine hopefully, "when
Lal comes."
"Very well then, we'll give her a sort of hint," suggested Ridgwell.
Now Cookie, beloved of the children, to say nothing of the household generally, was a fat person, with very red cheeks, and very good-humoured rolling green eyes that somehow always looked as if they had been originally intended for gooseberries, which had boiled and bubbled during her many cooking operations and had never been permitted to simmer.
"What do you children want in the kitchen?" commenced Cookie. "Master Ridgie, you know quite well that your birthday cake ain't to be ready till tea-time."