Her sister stopped playing, wheeled round on the music-stool, and taking a cigarette out of a box on the piano, bounced it end-on with merciless violence against her thumbnail before putting it in her mouth. "I believe you are so dev'lish intrigued with this man because he snubbed you the other day," she drawled. Josephine laughed. "There are some men one would rather like to be beaten by---- Al, can you think of an excuse to go over there this afternoon? What about those theatricals at Aldbury--can't we ask him to act in them? He won't, of course--that sort's too self-conscious--but it would be a decent excuse." "Obvious," said the more experienced Alicia. "Rot--be a sport." "But he leaves me cold," objected the "sport." "So much the better. Didn't I help you when young Maunder was staying at Norton Hall? You owe me one over that." "Oh, all right, then," assented Alicia. "I shall have to gas to Lady Manners all the afternoon. 'Snice, I don't think." "Lady Manners is away. Gone to town with old Sir Stick-in-the-mud. But, of course, we shan't know that--get all in a flutter----" Alicia opened her heavy-lidded eyes wide. "My dear!" she cried, and then, spinning round to the key-board, vamped the opening bars of Mendelssohn's Wedding March. "Shur-r-r up!" shrieked Josephine, with a burst of abrupt laughter somehow suggestive of the cry of the green woodpecker. All unconscious of the tremors he had awakened in the maidenly bosom of Josephine Smedley, Graeme Jakes sallied forth to meet his guests. He had mapped out a programme for their amusement with considerable care, harking back in memory to the far-off days when as a little boy he was bidden to spend adventurous afternoons at adjoining country houses, where there were always swarms of children, and the gardeners locked the doors of the wall-gardens as a precaution---- Well, there would be no doors locked that afternoon. He had seen to that, and the tea, with its piles of cakes and pyramids of fruit, bowls of cream and dishes of Mrs. Mackworth's famous preserves, materialised the vision of a meal he had always dreamed as a child, and somehow never achieved in waking hours. He met his guests half-way up the avenue through the park, a demure-looking little group from which first Cornelius James and then Jane detached themselves and sped to greet him. "Look," said Jane, extending decorously gloved fingers, "tell Miss Mayne you hate people with gloves. She made us wear them--Georgie and me." "Did she?" said the host, and advanced to welcome the autocrat who had decreed gloves. Of course, Emily would expect children to wear gloves----