“If only Alfred had friends!” groaned Dolly. “I’m sure Mumma has told him often enough to bring any of his friends down, whenever he likes, but he never does.” “Poor old thing, struggling along in an office all the time! I don’t believe he _has_ any friends,” said Amy, pessimistically. The Kendals are not given to illusions. They know well that Alfred is stolidly unattractive, unenterprising, and quite unlikely to provide himself or his sisters with interesting friends. And yet, in their matter-of-fact way, Blanche and Amy and Dolly and Aileen all vehemently desire that “something should happen” at Dheera Dhoon, and the only happenings to which they have ever been taught to look are matrimonial ones of the most orthodox kind. “Girls,” I can imagine Mrs. Kendal saying to them in her direct way, “I think two of you might very well walk down to Nancy Fazackerly’s and find out something about this paying guest who’s coming to stay with her. We must have some tennis, later on. Ask her if she’d care to bring him up one afternoon.” “Which afternoon, mumma?” “Whichever afternoon she likes. Find out when he’s coming. I think it’s next week. I was thinking of having a tennis party one day before the end of the month.” I am sure that Dolly and Aileen forthwith put on their hats--on the backs of their heads--slung woolen sports coats of dingy gray, and sickly green, respectively, across their shoulders, and walked to Loman Cottage; and that they did not talk to each other on the way. Unlike the Ambreys, the Kendals seldom have anything to talk to one another about. Abstract discussion does not interest them in the least, and they confine their remarks to small and obvious comments upon things that they can see. “Two cart horses,” Aileen might say when they were exactly abreast with the gate over which the two cart horses could plainly be seen. And a quarter of a mile farther on Dolly might perhaps remark: “The stream’s pretty full. That’s all the rain we had last week, I suppose.” “I suppose it is.” After a pause Dolly might say, thoughtfully, “I suppose so,” and after that they would walk on in silence, both slightly swinging their arms as they went. Their conversation with Mrs. Fazackerly was afterward repeated to Claire by Aileen Kendal. They found her with her head tied up in a becoming purple-and-white- check handkerchief and wearing a purple-and-white-check cotton frock with short sleeves, turning out her spare room. She does a great deal of her own housework, and always does it very well. “You’ve got on a very smart frock,” said Aileen, whose tone is always disparaging, not from any ill will, but because it is the Kendal habit to make personal remarks and to give them a disparaging inflection. Mrs. Fazackerly, who is used to this, said that she had made the frock herself, and it washed well, and wouldn’t they sit down.