“One feels it,” explained Joan. He followed it up with another. This one with a chorus, consisting chiefly of “Umpty Umpty Umpty Umpty Ay,” which was vociferously encored.!

“Of course,” answered Joan, “when I’m better. I’m not very well just now. It’s the weather, I suppose.” “They must have felt sure you could act,” said Joan. “Next time it will be a clean offer.”

She did not see him again that night. They met in the morning at breakfast. A curious strangeness to each other seemed to have grown up between them, as if they had known one another long ago, and had half forgotten. When they had finished she rose to leave; but he asked her to stop, and, after the table had been cleared, he walked up and down the room, while she sat sideways on the window seat from where she could watch the little ships moving to and fro across the horizon, like painted figures in a show. Mary smiled. “But why shouldn’t the good newspaper proprietor hurry up and become a multi-proprietor?” she suggested. “Why don’t you persuade Lord Sutcliffe to buy up three or four papers, before they’re all gone?” “Forgive me,” he said. “You must remember that I am still her lover.” They had reached the tree that leant a little forward beyond its fellows, and he had halted and turned so that he was facing her. “Did she and your father get on together. Was she happy?”