“Oh, yes!” Mrs. Norman Knight joined in the laughter. “Wasn’t that too absolutely creamy?” And a funnier thing still was that now her coat was off she did look like a very intelligent monkey—who had even made that yellow silk dress out of scraped banana skins. And her amber ear-rings; they were like little dangling nuts. “This is a sad, sad fall!” said Mug, pausing in front of Little B’s perambulator. “When the perambulator comes into the hall——” and he waved the rest of the quotation away. The bell rang. It was lean, pale Eddie Warren (as usual) in a state of acute distress. “It _is_ the right house, _isn’t_ it?” he pleaded. “Oh, I think so—I hope so,” said Bertha brightly. “I have had such a _dreadful_ experience with a taxi-man; he was _most_ sinister. I couldn’t get him to _stop._ The _more_ I knocked and called the _faster_ he went. And _in_ the moonlight this _bizarre_ figure with the _flattened_ head _crouching_ over the _lit-tle_ wheel. . . .” He shuddered, taking off an immense white silk scarf. Bertha noticed that his socks were white, too—most charming. “But how dreadful!” she cried. “Yes, it really was,” said Eddie, following her into the drawing-room. “I saw myself _driving_ through Eternity in a _timeless_ taxi.” He knew the Norman Knights. In fact, he was going to write a play for N. K. when the theatre scheme came off. “Well, Warren, how’s the play?” said Norman Knight, dropping his monocle and giving his eye a moment in which to rise to the surface before it was screwed down again. And Mrs. Norman Knight: “Oh, Mr. Warren, what happy socks?” “I _am_ so glad you like them,” said he, staring at his feet. “They seem to have got so _much_ whiter since the moon rose.” And he turned his lean sorrowful young face to Bertha. “There _is_ a moon, you know.” She wanted to cry: “I am sure there is—often—often!” He really was a most attractive person. But so was Face, crouched before the fire in her banana skins, and so was Mug, smoking a cigarette and saying as he flicked the ash: “Why doth the bridegroom tarry?” “There he is, now.” Bang went the front door open and shut. Harry shouted: “Hullo, you people. Down in five minutes.” And they heard him swarm up the stairs. Bertha couldn’t help smiling; she knew how he loved doing things at high pressure. What, after all, did an extra five minutes matter? But he would pretend to himself that they mattered beyond measure. And then he would make a great point of coming into the drawing-room, extravagantly cool and collected.