Jaffery

t out of the train and catching sight of us ran up and

that people stuck wondering heads out of the carriage windows. Then he thrust himself between us, linked our

l me that the Man o

ve you a pleasant

f Pembroke-fussy little cock-sparrow-he'd just come from England and

e himself and I, who went on with Jaffery, looking back, saw hi

y grasshopper? I'm longing to see 'em. That's the pull of being free. You can adopt other fel

ill we reached the station yard, wher

ave you still got th

me walk miles and miles along unknown and unfrequented roads. In the aggregate I must have spent months of my life doing physical culture exercises underneath it. You got into it at the back; it was about ten feet high, and you started it at the side by a handle in its midriff. But I

t keep a fleet of cars, I had to choose between this and the don

casm. His face fell. He made

ra gon

not being welcomed by Barbara at Northlands

to run up to town on business. She sent y

t. But you gave me a shock. Northland

and pulled her into the motor-house. We dismounted, however, in the drive. A tiny figure in a blue smock came scuttling over the sloping lawn. The next thing I saw was the small blue patch somewhere in the upland region of Jaffer

air. It won't hu

ace in front of the house and having established my guests in easy chairs, I went indoors to order such drink as would be refreshing on a sultry August noon. When I returned I found Jaffery, with Susan on his

know, Susie, Uncle Adrian has just got to take a pen and jab it into a piec

e gaze on Adrian. "Do

got a pen

addy's study," she said, s

ot the father of a feminine thing of seven years ol

with a great gold pen, and po

ied my daughter. "Uncle J

e born, like Uncle Adrian, wi

and a brown patch over the other, with the nose of a collie and the legs of a Great Dane and the tail of a fox-terrier, whose mongreldom, however, Adrian repudiated by the bold assertion that he was a Zanzibar bloodhound-the lucky advent of this

rous person," said I, waving a hand. "What a

me down here to forget her. I'll tell you about her later." Then he grinned, in his silly, famil

ome account of yourself. What were

cting,"

gold, coa

ttlefield. The war correspondent who goes out there not knowing his ground will be a silly ass. The slim statesman like me won't. See? So poor old Prescott-you must know Prescott of Reuter's?-anyhow that was t

iquid (one always had to provide largely for J

picturesque account of you

you'll give me time," said he, wiping his lips with a vast red

of his wanderings. He had a Rabelaisian way of laughing over must of his experiences, even those which had a touch of th

into each other's faces and saying how well they looked, regardless of the fact that they were blocking the way for Doria, who remained in the car, I had to move them on with the reminder that they had the whole week-end for their effusions. Adrian helped Doria to alight, and to Doria then, for the first time, was presented Jaffery Chayne. Jaffer

eet you." Then after a fraction of a second cam

e ladies went indoors to take off their things, accompanied by Adrian, who wanted a lover's word with Doria on the way. Jaffery followed

gularly beautifu

rnicroft,

nishing thing I've e

e you," said I with a laugh, "because there mi

"Do you mean-she's

onth,"

me. "Isn't he a lucky devil?" he asked, instead. "The most pestilentiall

male women that we thought we would g

known that Adrian's fiancée was knocking around I'd

nted from doing t

." He broke into a guffaw. "Fa

," said I. "Lots of people

orn to be married,"

re you,"

flip of a thing in petticoats, whom I shou

rrupted, "it is the woma

practises it.

the adventitious cow, in the field some hundred yards away

ntinue your delicate metaphor, you

makes you believe they're dripping blood and tears. Don't I know '

s (like myself) were doomed to it. But there was a race of Chosen Ones, to which he belonged, whose untamable and omni-concupiscent essence kept them outside the dull conjugal pale. For such as him, nineteen hundred women at once, scattered within

e paused for breath, "one would th

ree, who've got to fill their lungs with air, who must get out into the wilds if they're to live-God! I'd sooner be snowed up on a battlefield than smirk at a da

," said I. "How ofte

titude, my philosophy. You see how impossible it would be for me to tie m

essed innoce

s and shook him in pain-dealing exuberance. Old Adrian was going to be married. He wished him joy. Yet it was no use his wishing him joy because he already had it

, "he would have taken her by the hair of her head and swung her up behind

les and pervading hairines

" said he, like the overg

se Barbara, like spring in deep summer, and Doria

c stories of Bulgaria, somewhat to her puzzledom, but wholly to her delight. But when he proposed to fill her silver mug (which he, as godfather, had given her on her baptism) with the liquefied dream of Paradise that Barbara, sola mortalium, ca

t I have s

d your mother's hock-cup is a sinful lust of the f

s Berkshire, not the Balkans? We don't intox

mself to some cold beef on the sideboard. The butler's assistance he declined. No Christian butler could carve for Jaffe

g to eat all that?" she a

nd mummy and daddy and Uncle Adri

Aunt

-but he turned to

ogre only-a bonn

conversation. Jaffery by way of apology for his Gargantuan appetite discoursed on the privations of travel in uncivilised lands. A lump of sour butter for lunch and a sardine and a hazelnut for dinner. We were to fancy

sponsibilities of all the Chancelleries of Europe knitted in her brow, discussed wedding preparations with Adrian. I, to whom the quality of the bath towels wherewith Adrian and his wife were to dry themselves and that of the sheets between which their housemaid was to lie, were matters of black and awful indifference, gave my more worthily applie

ide by side on the low parapet they looked like a vast red-bearded ogre and a feminine black-haired elf-she had taken off her hat-engaged in a conversation in which

d, "of an individual woman's nature, th

old bumble-bee. I'm always busting myself up against glass panes, not seeing, a

d and ninety-nine men out of a thousand (I glanced at Adrian who had religiously preserved two inches of ash on his)-

mesian complications of feeling. I've had in my life"-he stuck pouch and pipe on the stone beside him-"I've had in my life

ed her shoulders a

t-you'll hear soon enough about Prescott. There was

e shook

p with us at Cambridge. He's dead. There

omanhood, whereas Jaffery, under the impression that he was whispering conf

f men more sympathetic to you

helpless paralytic with not a cent and no prospect of earning a cent, I know I coul

do the same for

is hands in his jacket poc

r wives and their children a

er shoulders in his huge but kindly hands, somewhat to her alarm-for, in her wo

his-that if Adrian's wife won't look on me as a tr

to admit him into her inner circle of friends; whereupon he caught up his po

e nodded permission-what else could she do? "We're going to be friends. And I say, B

ely in his footsteps. But it was not answered; for from the drawing-room

to see y

God! What ki

t Franklin,

took the way, and put her down at the ba

handsome, dres

s,

all in the sweep of a desperate gaze. "It's

onfronted him. "And

ed his knee

mic widow

at in thunder she w

e has no business to come running after you like this. She must

feet nothing, thereby demonstrating the obvio

Franklin r

escott,"