"It is my place as long as I pay for it," snapped the Colonel loftily. "Certainly, Colonel; no doubt, Colonel; I beg pardon, Colonel," Popkiss protested abjectly. A few heavy drops suddenly came pattering down on the glass roof of the yard. "It is going to rain," Colonel Hemyock observed in a tone of irritated surprise at the outrage. "We shan't get over to Babbleton this afternoon." This to his daughters, who looked, in anticipation of harm to their finery, more discontented, if possible, than before. "We had better put up till Quorn arrives. You can wait here and I will look in at the club." There was a waiting-room adjoining the archway for the accommodation of the county people who put up their carriages at the _Quorn Arms_ while they shopped in the town. Shown in, with much obsequiousness, by Host Popkiss, the Misses Ethel and Dagmar Hemyock here proposed to spend a tedious and highly uninteresting half-hour. The prospect did not tend to lessen the grievance they entertained against the world in general and certain unappreciative persons of the male sex in particular. "I wonder," observed Ethel, taking up and throwing down again the current number of the _Bunbury Bulletin_, "if father finds Sharnbrook at the club, whether he will have the sense to let him know we are here." "It strikes me ignorance is bliss in Sharnbrook's case," replied Dagmar cuttingly, as she stood at the window, peevishly regarding the rain. "Oh, shut up, Dagmar," her sister returned, with a surprising lack of dignity in one so highly born. "If it clears up we might take him over to Babbleton with us." "If he'll come," said Dagmar sarcastically. "He must come," Ethel declared emphatically. "He has fought shy of us since he proposed to you," Dagmar remarked maliciously. "And was accepted," put in Ethel decisively. "Trust you," sneered her sister. "He has the bad taste to put down the proposal to the champagne. Mrs. Wyrley-Byrde told mother so." "All right," snapped Ethel. "Not even father's champagne ever made any man propose to you." "A man," retorted Dagmar pointedly, "requires to be in his sober senses to appreciate me. And if he proposed under the influence of Heidsieck, I should not accept him." "Oh, wouldn't you?" returned Ethel with somewhat over-emphasized incredulity. "Anyhow, I am not going to let John Arbuthnot Sharnbrook slip through my fingers." "Trust you," Dagmar laughed scornfully. "You'll hold him as tight as he was when he proposed to you." "As he says he was," Ethel corrected. "As he must have been," Dagmar maintained unfeelingly. "After all," the amiable young lady continued, with a yawn, "who is John Arbuthnot Sharnbrook that he should be exempt from matrimony? Better men than he have submitted to it. Julius Caesar was married--and----" "And Alexander the Great," Ethel supplied as her sister paused for another notable victim of the marriage tie. "Yes, I think he was," pursued Dagmar indifferently.