Very deliberately George Keets lit a fresh cigarette. "No one person, you know, can have everything," he observed with the thinnest of all his thin-lipped smiles. "Three generations of plowing, isn't it, to raise one artist? Oh, Mr. Kennilworth's social eccentricities, I assure you, are due infinitely more to the soil than to the soul." "Oh, can your statistics!" implored my Husband a bit sharply, "and pass Miss Davies the sugar!" "And some coffee!" proffered Paul Brenswick. "And this heavenly cereal!" urged the Bride. "Oh, now I remember," winced the May Girl suddenly. "He said 'she'll wait all right'--but, of course, it does seem just a little--wee bit--f-funny! Even if you don't care a--a rap," she struggled heroically through a glint of tears. "Even if you don't care a rap--sometimes it's just a little bit hard to say a word like f-funny!" "Damned hard," agreed my Husband and Paul Brenswick and George Keets all in a single breath. The subsequent conversation fortunately was not limited altogether to expletives. Never, I'm sure, have I entertained a more vivacious not to say hilarious company at breakfast. Nobody seemed contented just to keep dimples in the May Girl's face. Everybody insisted upon giggles. The men indeed treated them selves to what is usually described as "wild guffaws." Personally I think it was a mistake. It brought Rollins down-stairs just as everybody was leaving the table in what had up to that moment been considered perfectly reestablished and invulnerable glee. Everybody, of course, except poor Allan John. No one naturally would expect any kind of glee from Allan John. In the soft pussy-footed flop of his felt slippers none of us heard Rollins coming. But I--I saw him! And such a Rollins! Stripped of the single significant facial expression of his life which I had surprised so unexpectedly in his eyes the night before, Rollins would certainly never be anything but just Rollins! Heavily swathed in his old plaid ulster with a wet towel bound around his brow he loomed cautiously on the scene bearing an empty coffee cup, and from the faintly shadowing delicacy of the parted portieres affirmed with one breath how astonished he was to find us still at breakfast, while with the next he confided equally fatuously, "I thought I heard merry voices!" It was on Claude Kennilworth's absence, of course, that his maddening little mind fixed itself instantly with unalterable concentration. "What ho! The--engagement?" he demanded abruptly. "There isn't any engagement," said my Husband with a somewhat vicious stab at the fire. From his snug, speculative scrutiny of the storm outside, George Keets swung round with what quite evidently was intended to be a warning frown. "Mr. Kennilworth has--defaulted," he murmured.