with a Salvation Army procession.  It was quite interesting to be at close quarters with them, they’re so absolutely different to what they used to be when I first remember them in the ’eighties.  They used to go about then unkempt and dishevelled, in a sort of smiling rage with the world, and now they’re spruce and jaunty and flamboyantly decorative, like a geranium bed with religious convictions.  Laura Kettleway was going on about them in the lift of the Dover Street Tube the other day, saying what a lot of good work they did, and what a loss it would have been if they’d never existed.  ‘If they had never existed,’ I said, ‘Granville Barker would have been certain to have invented something that looked exactly like them.’  If you say things like that, quite loud, in a Tube lift, they always sound like epigrams.”

“I think you ought to do something about Louise,” said the dowager.

“I’m trying to think whether she was with me when I called on Ada Spelvexit.  I rather enjoyed myself there.  Ada was trying, as usual, to ram that odious Koriatoffski woman down my throat, knowing perfectly well that I detest her, and in an unguarded moment she said: ‘She’s leaving her present house and going to Lower Seymour Street.’  ‘I dare say she will, if she stays there long enough,’ I said.  Ada didn’t see it for about three minutes, and then she was positively uncivil.  No, I am certain I didn’t leave Louise there.”

“If you could manage to remember where you did leave her, it would be more to the point than these negative assurances,” said Lady Beanford; “so far, all we know is that she is not at the Carrywoods’, or Ada Spelvexit’s, or Westminster Abbey.”

“That narrows the search down a bit,” said Jane hopefully; “I rather fancy she must have been with me when I went to Mornay’s.  I know I went to Mornay’s, because I remember meeting that delightful Malcolm What’s-his-name there—you know whom I mean.  That’s the great advantage of people having unusual first names, you needn’t try and remember what their other name is.  Of course I know one or two other Malcolms, but none that could possibly be described as delightful.  He gave me two tickets for the Happy Sunday Evenings in Sloane Square.  I’ve probably left them at Mornay’s, but still it was awfully kind of him to give them to me.”

“Do you think you left Louise there?”

“I might telephone and ask.  Oh, Robert, before you clear the tea-things away I wish you’d ring up Mornay’s, in Regent Street, and ask if I left two theatre tickets and one niece in their shop this afternoon.”

“A niece, ma’am?” asked the footman.

“Yes, Miss Louise didn’t come home with me, and I’m not sure where I left her.”

“Miss Louise has been upstairs all the afternoon, ma’am, reading to the second kitchenmaid, who has the neuralgia.  I took up tea to Miss Louise at a quarter to five o’clock, ma’am.”

“Of course, how silly of me.  I remember now, I asked her to read the Faerie Queene to poor Emma, to try to send her to sleep.  I always get some one to read the Faerie Queene to me when I have neuralgia, and it usually sends me to sleep.  Louise doesn’t seem to have been successful, but one can’t say she hasn’t tried.  I expect after the first hour or so the kitchenmaid would rather have been left alone with her neuralgia, but of course Louise wouldn’t leave off till some one told her to.  Anyhow, you can ring up Mornay’s, Robert, and ask whether I left two theatre tickets there.  Except for your silk, Susan, those seem to be the only things I’ve forgotten this afternoon.  Quite wonderful for me.”

TEA

James Cushat-Prinkly was a young man who had always had a settled conviction that one of these days he would marry; up to the age of thirty-four he had done nothing to justify that conviction.  He liked and admired a great many women collectively and dispassionately without singling out one for especial matrimonial consideration, just as one might admire the Alps without feeling that one wanted any particular peak as one’s own private property.  His lack of initiative in this matter aroused a certain amount of impatience among the sentimentally-minded women-folk of his home circle; his mother, his sisters, an aunt-in-residence, and two or three intimate matronly friends regarded his dilatory approach to the married state with a disapproval that was far from being inarticulate.  His most innocent flirtations were watched with the straining eagerness which a group of unexercised terriers concentrates on the slightest movements of a human being who may be reasonably considered likely to take them for a walk.  No decent-souled mortal can long resist the pleading of several pairs of walk-beseeching dog-eyes; James Cushat-Prinkly was not sufficiently obstinate or indifferent to home influences to disregard the obviously expressed wish of his family that he should become enamoured of some nice marriageable girl, and when his Uncle Jules departed this life and bequeathed him a comfortable little legacy it really seemed the correct thing to do to set about discovering some one to share it with him.  The process of discovery was carried on more by the force of suggestion and the weight of public opinion than by any initiative of his own; a clear working majority of his female relatives and the aforesaid matronly friends had pitched on Joan Sebastable as the most suitable young woman in his range of acquaintance to whom he might propose marriage, and James became gradually accustomed to the idea that he and Joan would go together through the prescribed stages of congratulations, present-receiving, Norwegian or Mediterranean hotels, and eventual domesticity.  It was necessary, however to ask the lady what she thought about the matter; the family had so far conducted and directed the flirtation with ability and discretion, but the actual proposal would have to be an individual effort.

Cushat-Prinkly walked across the Park towards the Sebastable residence in a frame of mind that was moderately complacent.  As the thing was going to be done he was glad to feel that he was going to get it settled and off his mind that afternoon.  Proposing marriage, even to a nice girl like Joan, was a rather irksome business, but one could not have a honeymoon in Minorca and a subsequent life of married happiness without such preliminary.  He wondered what Minorca was really like as a place to stop in; in his mind’s eye it was an island in perpetual half-mourning, with black or white Minorca hens running all over it.  Probably it would not be a bit like that when one came to examine it.  People who had been in Russia had told him that they did not remember having seen any Muscovy ducks there, so it was possible that there would be no Minorca fowls on the island.

His Mediterranean musings were interrupted by the sound of a clock striking the half-hour.  Half-past four.  A frown of dissatisfaction settled on his face.  He would arrive at the Sebastable mansion just at the hour of afternoon tea.  Joan would be seated at a low table, spread with an array of silver kettles and cream-jugs and delicate porcelain tea-cups, behind which her voice would tinkle pleasantly in a series of little friendly questions about weak or strong tea, how much, if any, sugar, milk, cream, and so forth.  “Is it one lump?  I forgot.  You do take milk, don’t you?  Would you like some more hot water, if it’s too strong?”

Cushat-Prinkly had read of such things in scores of novels, and hundreds of actual experiences had told him that they were true to life.  Thousands of women, at this solemn afternoon hour, were sitting behind dainty porcelain and silver fittings, with their voices tinkling pleasantly in a cascade of solicitous little questions.  Cushat-Prinkly detested the whole system of