She drank tea, and pulled herself together for a lively description of the wheel-locking and the subsequent conversation, a bright ridiculous account which made the affair happen by implication on the high road and not in a byeway, and was adorned with every facetious ornament that seemed likely to get a laugh from the children. But she talked rather fast, and she felt she forced the fun a little. However, it amused the children all right, and Theodore created a diversion by choking with his tea. From first to last Marjorie was extremely careful to avoid the affectionate scrutiny of her mother's eye. And had this lasted the _whole_ afternoon? asked Mrs. Pope. "Oh, they'd talked for half-an-hour," said Marjorie, or more, and had driven back very slowly together. "He did all the talking. You saw what he was yesterday. And the donkeys seemed too happy together to tear them away." "But what was it all about?" asked Daffy curious. "He asked after you, Daffy, most affectionately," said Marjorie, and added, "several times." (Though Trafford had as a matter of fact displayed a quite remarkable disregard of all her family.) "And," she went on, getting a plausible idea at last, "he explained all about aeroplanes. And all that sort of thing. Has Daddy gone to Wamping for some more cricket?..." (But none of this was lost on Mrs. Pope.) § 8 Mr. Magnet's return next day was heralded by nearly two-thirds of a column in the _Times_. The Lecture on the Characteristics of Humour had evidently been quite a serious affair, and a very imposing list of humorists and of prominent people associated with their industry had accepted the hospitality of the _Literati_. Marjorie ran her eyes over the Chairman's flattering introduction, then with a queer faint flavour of hostility she reached her destined husband's utterance. She seemed to hear the flat full tones of his voice as she read, and automatically the desiccated sentences of the reporter filled out again into those rich quietly deliberate unfoldings of sound that were already too familiar to her ear.