Miss Haldane was worried, . Her usually cheerful old face was wrinkled into lines of perplexity, her eyes were anxious.  
Something was wrong at the White House. Dickie had slept peacefully throughout the night, and with the extraordinary recuperation of children, had demanded bread and milk on awaking. It was natural to suppose that an air of should prevail. Yet Lady Anne was pale, silent, ; Millicent Sheldon slightly cold and . What in the name of wonder did it signify? Miss Haldane connected the extraordinary atmosphere with the Piper. It was true that he had been accountable, under , for Dickie’s marvellous recovery, yet Miss Haldane distinctly regarded him as a bird of ill-omen, and in her heart bitterly regretted that necessity had called him to the house.
 
Throughout the day she fidgeted and fluttered interiorly, keeping sharp and anxious watch on Anne’s pale and almost stern face, without, however, in the least appearing to do so. At tea-time she found herself alone in the drawing-room with Millicent, Anne being in Dickie’s room.
 
Then Miss Haldane could contain her anxiety no longer. She disliked Millicent Sheldon, but it was a case of any port in a storm. Having poured out tea and handed Millicent a cup, she prefaced her first remark by a slight and nervous cough.
 
“Anne looks very pale,” she said tentatively. “I hoped to see her looking better now our anxiety is practically at an end.”
 
“Yes,” said Millicent, taking a of tea.
 
This was unsatisfactory. Miss Haldane returned to the charge more openly.
 
“I hope,” she said, “that nothing has worried her?”
 
Millicent put down her teacup. “It is distinctly unfortunate,” she said, “that that man who called himself Peter the Piper should have come into this neighbourhood.” She made the remark with a calm of manner.
 
 
“Oh?” Miss Haldane, up her ears and looking for all the world like a terrier on the of a rat; “do you know anything about him?”
 
“Only that he has spent three years in prison for forgery,” said Millicent gravely. “Anne has got unaccountably familiar with him in some way, and is naturally to find her friendship misplaced.” She her smooth white brow with an air of grave, gracious anxiety, but there was a hard expression in her eyes.
 
Miss Haldane like a small angry bird, the terrier expression forgotten.
 
“Lady Anne,” she said with dignity, “is certainly not familiar with him. You must have been misinformed.”
 
“Really!” Millicent lifted her coolly. “From Anne’s own showing yesterday, she knew more about him than probably you or I had the smallest idea of. She has not seen fit to in me, but it was apparent.”
 
Miss Haldane sat very upright. “If Anne did know more of him than we imagine,” she remarked firmly, “it shows that he was a more desirable person to know than I had supposed.”
 
 
Millicent controlled her temper admirably. Of course, it was entirely absurd, but the old thing was, unquestionably, trying to snub her.
 
“A man who has been in prison!” she remarked, with an air of quiet finality and an little laugh.
 
Miss Haldane’s usually dim old eyes blazed. “Under God we owe Dickie’s recovery to him,” she said with quiet dignity. “Might not that make us a little charitable towards him?”
 
And Millicent, for her outward of manner, was annoyedly conscious that Miss Haldane had scored.
 
And then Anne walked in.
 
“Am I interrupting confidences?” she asked, with an attempt at her usual lightness of manner. “Dickie is a fraud; he is demanding bread and jam, or at least toast and honey. I consider he has basely deceived us all.”
 
And then she saw that the atmosphere was really strained, tense. She pretended blindness, however, and, sitting down, asked for some tea. While drinking it she made a few airy remarks, to which M............