The party greeted their host characteristically. His uncle, even as he shook hands, let drop a few fervent anticipatory remarks on the subject of lunch; Mr. Ames, who was an old college boat captain, coupled his greeting with an anxious inquiry as to the club's prospects of success that evening; Mrs. Ames' eyes plainly said, "Well, I've _brought_ her, my boy; now wire in!" and Miss Freshwater, when it came to her turn, shook hands with an unaffected pleasure and _camaraderie_ which would have suited Hughie better if there had been discernible upon her face what Yum-Yum once pithily summed up as "a trace of diffidence or shyness." Still, Hughie was so enraptured with the vision before him that he failed to observe a small and shrinking figure which had coyly emerged from the train, and was hanging back, as if doubtful about its reception, behind Mrs. Ames' skirts. Presently it detached itself and stood before Hughie in the form of a small girl with coppery brown hair and wide grey-blue eyes. "Joey!" shouted Hughie. "She would come!" explained his uncle, in the resigned tones of a strong man who knows his limits. The lady indicated advanced to Hughie's side, and, taking his hand, rubbed herself ingratiatingly against him in the inarticulate but eloquent manner peculiar to dumb animals and young children. CHAPTER III JIMMY MARRABLE Luncheon on the whole was a success, though Mrs. Gunn's behaviour exceeded anything that Hughie had feared. She began by keeping the ladies adjusting their hair in Hughie's bedroom for something like ten minutes, while she recited to them a detailed and revolting description of her most recent complaint. Later, she initiated an impromptu and unseemly campaign--beginning with a skirmish of whispers in the doorway, swelling uproariously to what sounded like a duet between a cockatoo and a bloodhound on the landing outside, and dying away to an irregular fire of personal innuendoes, which dropped over the banisters one by one, like the gentle dew of heaven, on to the head of the retreating foe beneath--with a kitchen-man over a thumb-mark on a pudding-plate.