"Yet in a way you earned it yourself," the critic chuckled. "But let me be quite clear. Is this a family quarrel? I don't want to quarrel with you personally. I hate your work. I think it false, pretentious and demoralizing. But I like you very much. Do, my dear fellow, let us contract my good taste in literature and bad taste in manners with your bad taste in literature and good taste in manners. Like two pugilists, let's shake hands and walk out of the ring arm-in-arm. Even if I hit you below the belt, you must blame your curves, Johnnie. You're so plump and rosy that...." "That word is becoming an obsession with you. You seem to think it annoys me, but it doesn't annoy me at all." "Then it is a family quarrel. Come, your young lady has opened her campaign well. I congratulate her. By the way, when am I to congratulate you?" "This," said John, rising with grave dignity, "is going too far." He left his brother, armed himself with a brassey, proceeded to the twenty-acre field, and made the longest drive of his experience. At lunch James announced that he and Beatrice must be getting back to town that afternoon, a resolution in which his host acquiesced without even a conventional murmur of protest. Perhaps it was this attitude of John's that stung Beatrice into a challenge, or perhaps she had been egged on by the mothers who, with their children's future to consider, were not anxious to declare open war upon the rich uncle. At any rate, in her commonest voice she said: "It's plain that Jimmie and I are not wanted here any longer." The mothers looked down at their plates with what they hoped was a strictly neutral expression. Yet it was impossible not to feel that they were triumphantly digging one another in the ribs with ghostly fingers, such an atmosphere of suppressed elation was discernible above the modest attention they paid to the food before them. Nobody made an effort to cover the awkwardness created by the remark, and John was faced with the alternative of contradicting it or acknowledging its truth; he was certainly not going to be allowed to ignore it in a burst of general conversation. "I think that is rather a foolish remark, Beatrice," was his comment. She shrugged her shoulders so emphatically that her stays creaked in the horrid silence that enveloped the table. "Well, we can't all be as clever as Miss Hamilton, and most of us wouldn't like to be, what's more." "The dog-cart will be round at three," John replied, coldly.