three; and Aunt Gretchen, whom Laetitia visited last summer, hadn't minded a bit.
Roddie had appeared from the bedroom by this time. He had stopped crying, but his face was red and swollen.
'What sort of a scrape's he got into?' demanded Laetitia.
'Never mind,' said Sheilah briefly. Then, 'if you don't care, children,' she went on, 'I'll carve the meat out here to-day—and not bother to set the table, it's so hot. Go and wash your face and hands, Phillip.'
Phillip had arrived now. Phillip was as little and shrunken as Laetitia was big and overgrown. The doctor had had a hard time with Phillip when he was a baby, persuading him to grow, and now his teachers were having an equally hard time persuading him to read. But he had clever fingers. As a baby he had loved to sit beside Felix evenings at the work-bench in the dining-room, and hold the delicate parts of the miniature furniture his father made, while the glue dried. 'Steady as a vise,' Felix used to say. Now Phillip was old enough to work on the furniture himself. He did practically all the sandpapering. And the rungs of some of the chairs were as slender as jack-straws. There was a suggestion of Sheilah about Phillip. His eyes were corn-flower blue, but the rest of him was like his Grandfather
