“I’m sure when we meet Mrs. Sack,” said Anna-Felicitas very politely indeed, “much as we expect to like her we shall nevertheless continue to like other people as well.  You, for instance.  Will she mind that?”

“It wasn’t so much that I liked other people,” said Mr. Sack, walking about and thinking tumultuously aloud rather than addressing anybody, “but that I liked other people so much.”

“I see,” said Anna-Felicitas, nodding.  “You overdid it.  Like over-eating whipped cream.  Only it wasn’t you but Mrs. Sack who got the resulting ache.”

“And aren’t I aching?  Aren’t I suffering?”

“Yes, but you did the over-eating,” said Anna-Felicitas.

“The world,” said the unhappy Mr. Sack, quickening his pace, “is so full of charming and delightful people.  Is one to shut one’s eyes to them?”

“Of course not,” said Anna-Felicitas.  “One must love them.”

“Yes, yes,” said Mr. Sack.  “Exactly.  That’s what I did.”

“And though I wouldn’t wish,” said Anna-Felicitas, “to say anything against somebody who so very nearly was my hostess, yet really, you know, wasn’t Mrs. Sack’s attitude rather churlish?”

Mr. Sack gazed at her.  “Oh, aren’t you a pretty—­” he began again, with a kind of agonized enthusiasm; but he was again cut short by Anna-Rose, on whom facts of a disturbing nature were beginning to press.

“Aunt Alice,” she said, looking and feeling extremely perturbed as the situation slowly grew clear to her, “told us we were never to stay with people whose wives are somewhere else.  Unless they have a mother or other female relative living with them.  She was most particular about it, and said whatever else we did we weren’t ever to do this.  So I’m afraid,” she continued in her politest voice, determined to behave beautifully under circumstances that were trying, “much as we should have enjoyed staying with you and Mrs. Sack if she had been here to stay with, seeing that she isn’t we manifestly can’t.”

“You can’t stay with me,” murmured Mr. Sack, turning his bewildered eyes to her.  “Were you going to?”

“Of course we were going to.  It’s what we’ve come for,” said Anna-Felicitas.

“And I’m afraid,” said-Anna-Rose, “disappointed as we are, unless you can produce a mother—­”

“But where on earth are we to go to, Anna-R.?” inquired Anna-Felicitas, who, being lazy, having got to a place preferred if possible to stay in it, and who besides was sure that in their forlorn situation a Sack in the hand was worth two Sacks not in it, any day.  Also she liked the look of Mr. Sack, in spite of his being so obviously out of repair.  He badly wanted doing up she said to herself, but on the other hand he seemed to her lovable in his distress, with much of the pathetic helplessness her own dear Irish terrier, left behind in Germany, had had the day he caught his foot in a rabbit trap.  He had looked at Anna-Felicitas, while she was trying to get him out of it, with just the same expression on his face that Mr. Sack had on his as he walked about the room twisting and untwisting his fingers behind his back.  Only, her Irish terrier hadn’t had a Gibson profile.  Also, he had looked much more efficient.