“Miss Prue and her pa do argufy to beat the band,” Nancy remarked to Jenny the cook as she waited for hot cakes.

“That’s all, Nancy.  I shan’t want any more,” her master told her when she carried them into the dining-room.  “You needn’t wait.”  As the door closed behind her he smiled to himself.  He always enjoyed the leisurely comfort of those last cakes.

The morning sun shone in brightly, emphasising the pleasant, substantial appointments of the room and the breakfast table.  Its glint in the old silver coffee pot was a joy to him; the unopened paper at his elbow spoke to him of the interests of a day, like it, not yet unfolded.  Uncle Bob after his own fashion savoured life....

[Illustration:  DR. PRUE]

The sun had travelled around the house and was looking in at the west window of the Little Red Chimney Room, when Virginia discovered her ladyship sitting on a low stool by her hearthstone deep in meditation.  “I saw the smoke,” she announced, “so I thought I’d come over.”

“I am glad to see you,” Margaret Elizabeth said, waking up.  “But what smoke do you mean?” And now it developed that although Miss Bentley was of course aware of the Little Red Chimney, and indeed preferred it red, she had not understood its significance.

In amused interest she listened while Virginia explained.  “That dear, ridiculous Uncle Bob!” she cried, hugging her knees.  “And what fun, Virginia!”

Virginia nodded.  “Like a fairy-tale,” she said.

“So it is,” Miss Bentley agreed, and became again lost in thought.

From the other side of the hearth Virginia watched her.  Her ladyship to-day wore a grey-blue gown with a broad white collar, and she contrasted harmoniously with the soft browns and greens of her surroundings.  Uncle Bob should have been there to enjoy the glint of the sunshine in her hair.

It was an unobtrusive room, abounding in pleasant suggestions if you sat still and let them sink in:  books around the walls, a few water colours and bits of porcelain, an open piano, a work table, a broad divan with many cushions, ferns in the windows, and the fire.

Virginia, however, saw nothing of this; she was looking at Margaret Elizabeth.  “The Candy Man wanted to know where you stayed when you weren’t here,” she remarked at length.

Miss Bentley came out of her brown study in great surprise.  Who in the world was the Candy Man?

“Why, you know the Candy Wagon on the Y.M.C.A. corner!  And don’t you remember how you fell in the mud, and the Candy Man helped you up, and I gave you your bag, and the Miser was there too?” Virginia spoke in patient toleration of Miss Bentley’s strange lapse of memory.

“Naturally I was rather shaken and didn’t notice.  Was it a Candy Man who picked me up?  And a miser, you say?” Chin in hand Margaret Elizabeth regarded her visitor.  “It is all very interesting, but why should the Candy Man wish to know about me?”