Hughie's impressions of the day were slightly blurred and confused--at the which let no man wonder. He was accustomed to fresh faces and new environments, but the plunge from yesterday into to-day had been a trifle sudden. Last night he had driven up to the door of Manors a masterless man, a superior vagabond, an irresponsible free-lance, with hundreds of acquaintances and never a friend. In twenty-four hours this sense of irresponsible detachment had gone for ever, and the spell of English home-life had sunk deep into his being. He felt for the first time that he was more than a mere unit in the Universe. He had turned from something into somebody. He realised that he had a stake in the country--the county--the little estate of Manors itself; and a great desire was upon him to settle down and surround himself with everything that is conveyed to an Englishman here and abroad--especially abroad--by the word Home. Then there were the people with whom he had come in contact that day. They were nearly all old friends, but they were old friends with new faces. There was Mildred Leroy, for instance. He had half expected his relations with that young matron, the past considered, to be of a slightly tender and sentimental nature. Far from it. Her attitude to him was simply maternal--as, indeed, it had been, had he realised the fact, from the very beginning of their friendship. A woman always feels motherly towards a man of her own age, and rightly, for she is much older than he is. Occasionally she mistakes this motherly feeling for something else, and marries him--but not often. Obviously Mildred Leroy now regarded Hughie as nothing more than an eligible young _débutant_, the chaperon's natural prey, to be rounded up and paired off with all possible despatch. Then there was Joey. Twenty-four hours ago he had had no particular views on the subject of his ward, beyond-- (1) The reflection that he would probably find her "rather a bore"; (2) An idle speculation as to whether, if expediency should demand it, he would be able to bring himself to marry her. Well, twenty-four hours is a long time. He saw now quite clearly that whatever Miss Gaymer's shortcomings might be, a tendency to bore her companions was not one of them; and that if ever the other question should arise, the difficulty would lie, not in bringing himself to marry Joey, but in bringing Joey to marry him. Like a sensible man, he decided to let things work themselves out in their own way, and went to bed. There he dreamed that Joey, attired in a blue kimono and red slippers, was teaching him to dance the two-step to a tune played by the engines of the Orinoco. CHAPTER XIII _VARIUM ET MUTABILE_ Hughie continued during the next few weeks to study the character of the female sex as exemplified by his ward Miss Joan Gaymer, and some facts in natural history were brought to his notice which had not hitherto occurred to him.