"She is a friend of Chris', not mine."

"Oh! And his friends are not yours—eh?"

Marie did not answer. She had never seen Dorothy in such a quarrelsome mood.

236 The men joined them from the dining-room and Chris came to his wife at once.

"On the stool of repentance?" he asked. "Why don't you have a chair?"

"I'm quite comfortable, thank you." She leaned her head against Miss Chester's knee with a little snuggling movement, and the old lady stopped in her work for a movement to stroke the girl's dark hair.

"I've just remembered," she said, "that I've got some tickets for that Westminster bazaar to-morrow, Marie. Some of us really ought to go. I promised the vicar we would. Couldn't you and Dorothy just run in for half an hour?"

Marie made a little grimace.

"I hate bazaars," she said.

Dorothy looked across the room at Chris.