Dorothy had been talking to Mr. Bielby, the young man who had been "just brought along," and had discovered that he was still at the McGrath. Suddenly she gave a laugh and a call to Laura Beamish. "I say, Laura! Mr. Jowett's still just the same as ever, Mr. Bielby says," she said. Walter Wyron broke into a laugh. "Jowett? 'Pon my word, I'd almost forgotten poor old Jowett! Immortelle's _his_ flower, I should say! What's Jowett's latest, Bielby?" Mr. Bielby related the "latest" of the Painting Professor through whose hands so many students had passed, all so different and all so exactly alike, that he had been driven to find what peace of mind he could in a saturnine resignation. Walter Wyron laughed again. "Dear old Jowett! But he seems to be getting a bit below his game. He used to get off better ones than that. Do you remember him on the womanly woman, Dickie?" "I remember his looking at my life-drawing and asking me if I couldn't sew," Dickie Lemesurier replied, bridling still at the recollection. "And he told me my drawing was the best in the class, and that didn't mean it was worth the time I'd spent on it," Walter chuckled. "The joke is that poor old Jowett can say such funny things and never dream that they're funny!" "Why, he didn't think tremendously of Amory herself!" said Katie Deedes indignantly. "And still," Laura remarked with dreamy irony, "I suppose we _ought_ to hide our abashed heads really--but somehow or other we go on painting----" "--still survive----" "--bear up----" "--quite happy in our ignorance----" "Curiously blind all the world must be except Jowett----" "Rather dreadful to know you're the only wise man left----" "Funny old stick!... But it's only a pose really----" "That exactly describes it----" "Certainly the immortelle for Jowett!"... But the party proper had not begun yet: Walter had not recited, and Laura Beamish's guitar still lay in its case in the window-seat. Katie Deedes, who always kept a sort of tally of the good things said and awarded marks (as it were) to the sayers, had not thought of striking her balance yet. "Give Dickie another cigarette, Cosimo, and then do let's have a song, Laura!" Amory exclaimed; and Walter Wyron jumped up to get Laura's instrument. It had long, many-coloured streamers of ribbon, which Walter disposed like _serpentins_ about Laura as she sat, and Laura, turning pegs and tenderly strumming, asked what she should sing. "Oh, 'The Trees they do Grow High!'" said Amory quickly; "and then 'The Sweet Primeroses' and 'The Clouded Yellow Butterfly,' please!--Do stop wriggling against my knees, Cosimo--and oh, how exquisite!--look, the moon's just coming in at the window!" And Laura's voice rose on the tender strumming as if a light and fluty sound planed over the intervals between chord and chord. "Lovely!" Amory murmured.... "Please, that verse again, about the ribbon, Laura!"