"Percy will soon be home, I suppose? To-day is not the day he goes to the Queen's Hall, is it?" asked Lady Kellynch, who thought any hall was highly honoured by Percy's presence, and very lucky to get it. She gave a graceful but rather unrecognising bow to Madeline, whom she never knew by sight. She really knew hardly anyone by sight except her sons; and this was the more odd as she had a particularly large circle of acquaintances, and made a point of accepting and returning every invitation she received, invariably being amongst those present at every possible form of entertainment, and punctiliously calling on people afterwards. She was always mounting staircases, going up in lifts, and driving about leaving cards, and was extremely hospitable and superlatively social. Bertha always wondered at her gregariousness, since one would fancy she could have got very little satisfaction in continual intercourse with a crowd of people whom she forgot the instant they were out of her sight. Lady Kellynch really knew people chiefly by their telephone numbers and their days, when they had any. She would say: "Mrs. So-and-so? Oh yes, six-three-seven-five Gerrard, at home on Sundays," but could rarely recollect anything else about her. She was at once vague and precise, quite amiable, very sentimental and utterly heartless; except to her sons. "No, Percy won't be home till dinner-time. To-day he's playing squash rackets." "That's so like his father," said Lady Kellynch admiringly. "He was always so fond of sports, and devoted to music. When I say sports, to be _strictly_ accurate I don't mean that he ever cared for rude, rough games like football or anything cruel like hunting or shooting, but he loved to look on at a game of cricket, and I've often been to Lord's with him." She sighed. "Dominoes! he was wild about dominoes! I assure you (dear Percy would remember), every evening after dinner he must have his game of dominoes, and sometimes even after lunch." "Dominoes, as you say, isn't exactly a field sport," sympathetically agreed Bertha. "Quite so, dear. But, however, that was his favourite game. Then, did I say just now he was fond of music? He didn't care for the kind that Percy likes, but he would rarely send a piano-organ away, and he even encouraged the German bands. How fond he was of books too--and reading, and that sort of thing! Percy gets his fondness for books from his father. Clifford too is fond of books." "He is indeed," said Bertha; "he's devoted to books. Last time I went to see him, when he was at home for the holidays, I found among his books a nice copy of 'The New Arabian Nights.' We hadn't one in the house at the time, and I asked him to lend it to me." "Did you indeed?" Lady Kellynch looked a shade surprised, as if it had been rather a liberty.