All was over, and the guests were gone, when I gave an invitation to
the others to come and make lemon-brew over my bedroom fire as an
appropriate concluding festivity. (It had been suggested by Bobby.) I
had not seen Philip for some time, but we were all astonished to hear
that he had gone out. We kept his "brew" hot for him, and Charles and
Bobby were both nodding--though they stoutly refused to go to
bed,--when his step sounded in the corridor, and he knocked and came
hastily in.
Everybody roused up.
"Oh, Philip, we've been wondering where you were! Here's your brew,
and we've each kept a little drop, to drink your good health."
("Mine is _all_ pips," observed Bobby as a parenthesis.) But Philip
was evidently thinking of something else.
"Isobel," he said, standing by the table, as if he were making a
speech, "I shall never forget your coming after me to-day. I told you
you had the temper of an angel."
"So did I," said Alice.
"Hear! hear!" said Bobby, who was sucking his pips one by one and
laying them by--"to plant in a pot," as he afterwards explained.
"You not only saved the theatricals," continued Philip, "you saved my
life I believe."
No "situation" in the play had been half so startling as this.
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