"Well, you like me to be childish, don't you? And it's childish to be naughty." "Come, we'll go home at once," said the Countess, uneasily; and followed by the tall girl and the little one, she tottered away, sweeping yards of chiffon. "I do hope she won't wear things like that when she's in--ahem!--_our_ motor-car," I remarked _sotto voce_, as Terry and I stood at the gate, watching, if not speeding, our parting guests. "I doubt very much if she'll ever be there," prophesied Terry, looking handsome and thoroughly Celtic, wrapped in his panoply of gloom. "Come away in, while I see if I can find you 'The harp that once through Tara's halls,' to play your own funeral dirge on," said I. "You look as if it would be the only thing to do you any good." "It would certainly relieve my feelings," replied Terry, "but I could do that just as well by punching your head, which would be simpler. Of all the infernal--" "Now don't be brutal!" I implored. "You were quite pleasant before the ladies. Don't be a whited sepulchre the minute their backs are turned. Think what I've gone through since I was alone with you last, you great hulking animal." "Animal yourself!" Terry had the ingratitude to retort. "What have _I_ gone through, I should like to ask?" "I don't know what you've gone through, but I know how you behaved," I returned, as we walked back to the magnolia tree. "Like a sulky barber's block--I mean a barber's sulky block. No, I--but it doesn't signify. Hullo, there's the universal provider, carrying off the tray. Felicite, _mon ange_, say how you summoned that tea and those cakes and cream from the vasty deep?" "What Monsieur is pleased to mean, I know not," my fourteen-stone angel replied. "I visited with haste a friend of mine at the hotel, and I came back with the things--that is all. It was an inspiration," and she sailed away, her head in the air. Terry and I went into the house, for the sun had left the high-walled garden, and besides, the talk we were going to have was more suitable to that practical region, my smoking-room-study-den, than to the romantic shade of a magnolia tree. We unpocketed our pipes, and smoked for several minutes before we spoke. I vowed that Terry should begin; but as he went on puffing until I had counted sixty-nine slowly, I thought it simpler to unvow the vow before it had had time to harden. "A penny for your thoughts, Paddy," was the sum I offered with engaging lightness. "Which is generous of me, as I know them already. You are thinking of Her." Teddy forgot to misunderstand, which was a bad sign. "If it weren't for Her, I'd have got out of the scrape at any price," said he, bold as brass. "But I'm sorry for that beautiful creature. She must lead a beastly life, between a silly, overdressed woman and a pert minx. Poor child, she's evidently as hard up as I am, or she wouldn't stand it. She's miserable with them, I could see."