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always had time for her, and never told her she was silly. The bolder ones perched unafraid upon her head and shoulders, and Tilda often appeared in the dining room now—for she was being trained to wait at table—with bird droppings in her hair. The scullery maid considered the aviatory to be a good place, a haven from the world, where no one reproved her, however kindly. And sometimes, despite the noisy avian chatter and oppressive humidity, the girl found it so restful here, that she actually . . . nodded off . . . just for a few . . . moments.
     
    Naturally, Doyle was disappointed not to be going.
    “But who is it will be lookin’ after you and Miss Belinda, ma’m?” (Arabella’s femme de chambre had been spoilt through having on several occasions accompanied her mistress to Bath. Now the little chit apparently expected to be taken to the Continent, as well.) “You’ll be needin’ somebody, surely, and if it isn’t to be me, it’ll be some sneakin’ foreigner, most like, who’ll sell you into white slavery and the Lord knows what-all!”
    She was packing Arabella’s toiletry case, fetching its specially designed comb, scissors, tweezers, nail file, shoe horn, back scratcher, sleeping tablets, sal volatile, and tooth powder from various places around the room, and because each item had its own compartment, and no two compartments were the same size, the task was less like packing than assembling a jigsaw puzzle in three dimensions.
    “White slavery!” cried Arabella delightedly. “How exquisitely diverting! Should you like that, Bunny?”
    “Should I like what?”
    Belinda was trying to pack a lavender beaded evening shawl so that it should be neither crushed nor snagged in transit, and she had only ever been able to concentrate her attention upon one thing at a time.
    “Being sold into white slavery?”
    “Oh, probably. The harems of the Orient are said to be lavish to the point of decadence. And then, of course, I should get to be the pasha’s favorite wife or concubine or whatever it is, and tell the other women what to do.”
    Arabella was sorting through her silk stockings, checking for holes and then discarding or rolling them up in pairs, accordingly. They had been custom-made for her, and were longer than was usual, since that courtesan supreme, that styler of trends and setter of fashions, had proclaimed knee-high stockings to be unflattering. The leg was shewn to greatest advantage, she insisted, when one’s stockings—particularly dark-colored ones—extended to mid-thigh. Locating the garter up there was fetching, too.
    “No; I shall be the favorite, Bunny,” she said. “ You could be second favorite.”
    “Oh, well. We shouldn’t both be sold to the same pasha, in any event. A set of brothers, I should think. Then you could be preferred in your harem, I should be exalted in mine, and we would both of us have heaps of eunuchs to do our bidding.”
    “But as it is,” said Doyle sourly, “you will both of you be on your own, as far as help goes, without so much as a eunuch between you! I cannot imagine how the pair of you will ever survive in them foreign parts!”
    “A eunuch between us?” asked Arabella.
    “Foreign parts!” cried Belinda. “I say! Do you think we shall experience any?”
    “Without doubt. The Italians are said to be an extremely amorous race. Attractive, too.” Arabella sighed, regarding the shoe she was wrapping up. “Do you suppose they’ll have started wearing heels again on the Continent? I absolutely detest these dull, flat slippers!”
    Doyle had finished with the toiletry case, and was now using a series of tiny silver funnels to fill a collection of leather-clad traveling bottles with eyewash, face creams, and scent. Frustration had been mounting within her, and at last she dropped the funnel, turned toward her mistress, and stamped her foot. Such a gesture, in any household but this one, would have immediately earned her the sack.
    “My point