Hermione was not a bit dashed. "_You_ may look for romance in bottles if you like. For my part ..." she stuck out her chin. "Well, oblige the company by telling us what you look for in a story?" "Orange blossoms," says she promptly; "not little bits of brain." He laughed with the rest of us at that, and he knocked the ash out of his pipe against the arm of the garden chair. Lord Helmstone, he said, would be waiting for his foursome. * * * * * A day or two after, Hermione accused him to his face of "story-telling." "You said you were only going to stay three weeks." To our astonishment he answered: "I don't think I said 'only' three weeks. I said three weeks. Three weeks certainly." "----and all the while arranging to settle down and live here." I looked from Eric, slightly annoyed, to Hermione, mocking, and to Lady Barbara, rolling large pale eyes and smiling self-consciously. "What makes you think I'm going to settle down?" he demanded. "Well, isn't that the intention of most people who put up a cottage in the country?" "Oh! you mean my penny bungalow." He picked up his golf clubs. "Nobody in this country 'settles down' in a bungalow," he said. As though she had some private understanding of the matter, Lady Barbara seemed to speak for him. "----just to live in for a while," she said quite gently. "Not to live in at all." Eric threw the strap of the canvas golf-bag over his shoulder, and made for the front-door. "What do you want a bungalow _for_, then?" Hermione's teasing voice followed after him. "----mere harmless eccentricity." He was "like that," he said. He turned round at Hermione's laugh, and I saw him looking at the expression on Lady Barbara's face. Very gentle and happy; almost pretty. And I had never thought Lady Barbara the least pretty before. Eric, too, seemed to be struck. "I find I've got to have a place to put things," he said more seriously, and then he went on out. "Must have some place to keep one's traps," he called back. Lady Barbara stood leaning against the door and looking out at the retreating figure, still with that expression that made the plain face almost beautiful. I felt that Eric had come lamely out of the encounter. What did it all mean? For he had said nothing whatever to us (who thought ourselves his special friends) about this curious project of putting up a bungalow. * * * * * A hideous little ready-made house, with a roof of corrugated iron, painted arsenic green, it came down from London in sections, and was set up in a field adjoining Big Klaus's orchard. The field belonged to Lord Helmstone. Eric continued to eat and to sleep at Big Klaus's, but he used to go over to the Bungalow and shut himself up to work.