The tigress shook herself. “Now, I wonder what you mean by _that_?” she challenged. Mr. Chater dropped the stick; precipitantly fled. “Of course it was all new to Bob,” he granted, throwing a bone. Very much to his alarm the tigress ignored the bone; rushed after him. “All you seem to think about,” cried she, “is making the boy slave. He's never had a proper holiday since he left school, and yet the very first time he goes off to see the world you must be fidgeting yourself to death all the time that he's not pushing the firm sufficiently; and immediately he comes back you must start cross-examining just as if he was an office-boy--not a word about his health or his pleasure. Oh, no! of course not!” Squirming in misery, Mr. Chater remarked that he had his partners to consider. “I'm only too glad that Bob should enjoy himself--only too glad. But you must remember, my dear, that part of his expenses for this trip was paid for by the firm--the _firm_. He was to call on foreign houses--” The tigress opened her mouth for fresh assault. Mr. Chater hurriedly thrust in a bone. “I don't say he hasn't done a great deal for us--not at all; I'd be the last to say that. What I say is that in duty to my partners I must take the first opportunity to ask him a few questions about it. Bob sees that himself; don't you, Bob?” “Oh, do let's keep shop off the table,” Bob snarled. “Fair sickens me this never getting away from the office.” “There you are!” Mrs. Chater cried. “There you are! Always business, business, business--that's what _I_ complain of.” With astounding recklessness Mr. Chater mildly said: “My dear, you started it.” Mrs. Chater quivered: “Ah, put it on me! Put it on me! Somehow you always manage to do that. Miss Humfray, when you've _quite_ finished your soup _then_ perhaps Clarence can take the plates.” Mary's thoughts, to the neglect of her duty, had crept away beneath cover of these exchanges. Now she endured the disaster of amid silence clearing her plate with four pairs of eyes fixed upon her. Clarence removed the course; Mr. Chater, leaping as far as possible from the scene of his ordeal, broke a new topic. He enticed tentatively: “I saw a funny bit in the paper this morning.” The tigress paused in the projection of another spring; sniffed suspiciously. “Oh!” “About that young Lord Comeragh,” Mr. Chater hurried on, delighted with his success. “He was up at Marlborough Street police-court this morning--at least his butler was; of course his lordship wouldn't go himself--charged with furiously driving his motorcar; and who do you think was in the car with him at the time? Ah!”