Madame Watt raised her head so abruptly that her glasses fell, brought up with a jerk at the end of a thin gold chain, and swung there. Cicely stood motionless by the roses. The Senator glanced up, then shifted his cigar and resumed his study of the financial page. 'You will hardly----' began Madame. 'Show him into the drawing-room,' said Cicely with dignity. The butler wavered. Then, as if to settle all such small difficulties, Henry himself appeared behind him, smiling naively, eagerly. Cicely hurried forward. Her quick smile came, and the little bob of her head. 'How do you do?' she said brightly. 'Mr Calverly--my aunt, Madame Watt! And my uncle, Senator Watt!' Madame Watt arose, deliberately, not without a solid sort of majesty. She was a presence; no other such ever appeared in Sunbury. She fixed an uncompromising gaze on Henry. So uncompromising was it that Cicely covered her embarrassment by moving hurriedly toward the drawingroom, with a quick:-- 'Come right in here.' There was no one living on this erratic earth who could have cowed Henry on this Saturday evening. A week later, yes. But not to-night. He never even suspected that Madame meant to cow him. In such moments as these (and there were a good many of them in his life) Henry was incapable of perceiving hostility toward himself. The disaster that on Tuesday had seemed the end of the world was to-night a hazy memory of another epoch. There were few grown or half-grown persons in Sunbury that were not thinking on this evening of the meanest scandal in the known history of the town and, incidentally, among others involved, of Henry Calverly; but Henry himself was of those few. He marched straight on Madame with cordial smile and outstretched hand. He wrung the hand of the impassive Senator. That worthy said, now:-- 'I have just read this first of your new series of sketches. Allow me to tell you that I think it admirable. In the briefest possible compass you have pictured a whole community in its petty relationships, at once tragic and comic. There is caustic satire in this sketch, yet I find deep human sympathy as well. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.' When, after a rather amazing outpouring of words--the thing didn't amount to much; just a rough draft really; he hoped they'd like the next one; it was about cauliflowers--he had disappeared into the front room, the Senator remarked:-- 'The young man makes an excellent impression.' 'The young man,' remarked Madame, 'is all right.' Half an hour later the noise of the front door opening, and a voice, caused the two young people to start up out of a breathless absorption in the story called _A Kerbstone Barmecide_, which Henry was reading from long strips of galley proof. He had already finished _The Cauliflowers of the Caliph_. For a moment Cicely's face went blank. The butler announced:-- 'Mr Jenkins calling, Miss Cicely.'