“Of course we will,” they said in a duet.  “What a lark!” And they actually began to pin up their dinner gowns.  It was Jim who stopped that.

“Oh, look here, you people,” he objected, “I’m not going to let you do that.  We’ll get some servants in tomorrow.  I’ll go down and put out the lights.  There will be enough clean dishes for breakfast.”

It was lucky for me that they started a new discussion then and there about who would get the breakfast.  In the midst of the excitement I slipped away to carry the news to Bella.  She was where I had left her, and she had made herself a cup of tea, and was very much at home, which was natural.

“Do you know,” she said ominously, “that you have been away for two hours; and that I have gone through agonies of nervousness for fear Jim Wilson would come down and think I came here to see him?”

“No one would think that, Bella,” I soothed her.  “Everybody knows you loathe him—­Jim, too.”  She looked at me over the edge of her cup.

“I’ll run along now,” she said, “since Takahiro isn’t here.  And if Jim has any sense at all, he will clear out every maid in the house.  I never saw such a kitchen in all my life.  Well, lead the way, Kit.  I suppose they are deep in bridge, or roulette, or something.”

She was fixing her veil, and I saw I would have to tell her.  Personally, I would much rather have told her the house was on fire.

“Wait a minute, Bella,” I said.  “You see, something queer has happened.  You know this is the anniversary—­well, you know what it is—­and Jim was awfully glum.  So we thought we would come—­”

“What are you driving at?” she demanded.  “You are sea-green, Kit.  What’s the matter?  You needn’t think I mind because Jim has a jollification to celebrate his divorce.”

“It—­it was Takahiro—­in the ambulance,” I blurted.  “Smallpox.  We—­Bella, we are shut in, quarantined.”

She didn’t faint.  She just sat down and stared at me, and I stared back at her.  Then a miserable alarm clock on the table suddenly went off like an explosion, and Bella began to laugh.  I knew what that was—­hysteria.  She always had attacks like that when things went wrong.  I was quite despairing by that time; I hoped they would all hear her and come downstairs and take her up and put her to bed like a Christian, so she could giggle her soul out.  But after a bit she quieted down and began to cry softly, and I knew the worst was over.  I gave her a shake, and she was so angry that she got over it altogether.

“Kit, you are horrid,” she choked.  “Don’t you see what a position I am in?  I am not going upstairs to face Anne and the rest of them.  You can just put me in the coal cellar.”

“Isn’t there a window you could get through?” I asked desperately.  “Locking the door doesn’t shut up a whole house.”