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206 have you two become so serious all at once? I don't really mind about the book, and I daresay that nothing will be said about the room."

"I doubt it," declared Philip judicially. "I shouldn't wonder if that room doesn't lead to quite a lot of talk before you hear the last of it. As for the book, I don't mind taking it off your hands at the published price myself."

"Well," remarked Mrs. Bartlett somewhat impatiently, when they had returned to the drawing-room, "aren't you going to say something, Flip? You have succeeded in making me curious, and to see you sitting there, smiling at a paper-knife, doesn't convey a great deal."

"My dear child," replied Philip, still playing with the paper-knife, "I am considering the kindest way to break it to you gently. The fact is, that as a maid-servant I fear your Marianna will turn out to be something of a white elephant."

"She is that already, in many things—dusting china, for instance," admitted the lady candidly. "But do you mean to say that the things she does are really good?"

"They are really good," said Philip deliberately. "They are so marvellously, strikingly, incomprehensively good that if I had not to repress any symptoms of enthusiasm by the doctor's orders I should have to get up and walk about the room while I talked of them."

"Does he know anything at all about it, Tom?" demanded Phœbe.

"I have heard him described as one of the best judges of black-and-white work in London," replied Tom.

"I suppose I don't understand it then," she said. "But none of the things seem at all pretty to me, and they are so unfinished."

Philip smiled broadly. "Well, don't complain," he