No; the frightened girl was not pleased. Not at all! Neither the aroma of fresh mulberry pies nor the Red Chamber, remembering its bloody history impressed her, and it was all because he wasn’t there. Intellectually, she realized that Simon Cholmondeley, the remarkable masterful tutor who had transformed her from a mere girl into a real woman, had a full life in which he was away again on safari, and he could not be expected to hold any consideration for the pleasure of one ophidian girl. Intellectually, she knew this. And yet…
   Truly, it had been a most eternal day when Brother Holly had brought him to her attention.
   Suddenly, a peal of mighty bells shattered her composure into a million remarkable pieces! She rose to face the inevitable. Surely it could not be — but it was! At the door, the perilous and masculine face she had come to know so well! “I’ve been mad, simply mad, without you to douse my fires,” he stated while the music in her heart rose to a new crescendo of happiness. “I need you, my angel — my porcelain angel!”
   At long last as there was a much-appreciated break in the formerly-incessant shelling, she knew that life without him was unthinkable, if not shadowy. Wthout him, could she ever have wondered if this would be a good time to remind him about the books he had borrowed?