"I hope--I _hope_," said Mrs. Botley-Markham, evidently choosing her words with care and tact, "that the weakness does not extend to Gipsy." Then Gipsy was connected with the Stantons! Freak would have to walk warily. But at this moment his attention was wandering in the direction of our hostess, who was beginning to exhibit symptoms of upheaval with a view to withdrawal. He replied carelessly:-- "No. Why should it?" Mrs. Botley-Markham, a little offended and flustered at being taken up so sharply, replied with exaggerated humility:-- "I only _meant_, dear Sir Arthur, that if one sister is delicate, possibly another may be slightly inclined--" Then Isobel and Gipsy were sisters. I knew it! At this moment the hostess gave the mystic sign, and the company rose. Freak turned a sad and slightly reproachful gaze upon Mrs. Botley-Markham. "You are forgetting, dear lady," he said gently. "Isobel and Gipsy are not related. Isobel was the sister of my poor first wife." He drew back Mrs. Botley-Markham’s chair with grave courtesy, and that afflicted lady tottered down the room and out of the door, looking like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The Freak and I resumed our seats. "Dear Sir Arthur," I said, "are you a knight or a baronet?" Before this point of precedence could be settled, our host called to us to move up higher. "I want to introduce you to Sir Arthur Twigg, Mainwaring," he said, indicating a pleasant-looking youth strongly resembling Dicky in appearance and bearing. "Come to lunch with me to-morrow, Tiny," said Dicky hurriedly to me. A few minutes later I heard him regretfully explaining to his host that an important legal consultation in his chambers at ten o’clock that evening would prevent him from joining the ladies afterwards in the drawing-room. CHAPTER XI THE FIRST TURNING TO THE RIGHT Next day I lunched with The Freak in Hall in the Inner Temple, where I was introduced by my host to the surrounding company as a "distinguished engineer, who had dammed the Nile several times and was now prepared to speak disrespectfully of the Equator." After luncheon Dicky suggested that I should walk round with him to his chambers in Bolton Street. It was a murky December afternoon. Christmas shopping had set in with its usual severity, and visitors from the country, armed with sharp-cornered parcels, surged tumultuously along the wrong side of every pavement, while the ordinary citizens of London trudged resignedly in the gutter. Dicky, quite undisturbed by the press, continued the conversation. "Yes, the family are all very fit," he said. "You must come and stay with us. I shall give myself a week’s holiday at Christmas and take you and Connie down to Shotley Beauchamp, and we will have a pop at Ethelbert, our pheasant, and discuss the days that are no more."