“I wouldn’t say it, if I didn’t mean it,” answered Joan; “but you haven’t got to trouble yourself about that . . . You’re quite passable.” She smiled. It seemed to her that most women would find him more than passable. Joan walked on slowly. She had the worried feeling with which, once or twice, when a schoolgirl, she had crawled up the stairs to bed after the head mistress had informed her that she would see her in her private room at eleven o’clock the next morning, leaving her to guess what about. It occurred to her, in Trafalgar Square, that she had promised to take tea with the Greysons the next afternoon, to meet some big pot from America. She would have to get out of that. She felt it wouldn’t do to put off Flossie.!

The girl turned her dark eyes full upon Joan. “What did stop you?” she demanded. He laughed. “I told you I’d be all right if you started me on China,” he said.

“You must come and see them,” the Human Document insisted. “Such dear, magnetic creatures. I superintend their entire education myself. We have a cottage in Surrey. It’s rather a tight fit. You see, there are seven of us now. But the three girls can easily turn in together for a night, Abner will be delighted.” Joan sat next to him at the round dinner-table with the child the other side of him. She noticed that he ate as far as possible with his right hand—his hands were large, but smooth and well shaped—his left remaining under the cloth, beneath which the child’s right hand, when free, would likewise disappear. For a while the conversation consisted chiefly of anecdotes by Mr. Airlie. There were few public men and women about whom he did not know something to their disadvantage. Joan, listening, found herself repeating the experience of a night or two previous, when, during a performance of Hamlet, Niel Singleton, who was playing the grave-digger, had taken her behind the scenes. Hamlet, the King of Denmark and the Ghost were sharing a bottle of champagne in the Ghost’s dressing-room: it happened to be the Ghost’s birthday. On her return to the front of the house, her interest in the play was gone. It was absurd that it should be so; but the fact remained. “But they’re so slow at their lessons,” grumbled Joan. “One repeats it and repeats it; and then, when one feels that surely now at least one has drummed it into their heads, one finds they have forgotten all that one has ever said.”