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"I can't say that I'll miss her," said Sir Robert, who liked those about him to be pleasant to the eye. "I've never been in Mixo-Lydia, and if they are all like that I hope never to go."

"Robert!" said his wife anxiously, for she had an amiable though often embarrassing weakness for oppressed nationalities and was afraid that Gradka, busy in the kitchen at the other end of the house, might hear her husband's words and give notice. Then Anne came back with the teapot and hot-water jug on a tray and they talked comfortably. Presently Lady Fielding went up to her room with Anne and there unpacked her little suitcase and showed her daughter a charming flowery silk dress exquisitely folded in pre-war tissue paper.

"Oh, mummy!" said Anne, "for me? Oh, how did you do it?"

"I found this silk in the cupboard in the sewing-room," said Lady Fielding. "I had quite forgotten it. So I took it to Madame Tomkins and asked her if she had your measurements and she looked at me with great contempt and said: 'Je connais par coeur le corps de Mademoiselle Anne,' which frightened me so much that I went away."