Harry from behind the kitchen door was signalling violently, forgetting that his white shirt-sleeve in his excited gestures was as visible to the rest of the company as to the astonished young man in the opposite doorway about to take a hasty leave. “Oh, I say! Come ’ere!” came Harry’s sepulchral whisper, as he beckoned wildly with a hand that unconsciously still grasped a muggy dish-towel. “Are you—calling me?” young Maxwell signalled with his lifted eyebrows. Harry’s response was unmistakable, and the young man slipped past the group who were studying place cards and sliding into chairs and bent his head to the retreating head of the boy. “I say, don’t you _see_ I don’t want to come in there with all those folks? Be a good sport, and stay, ’r I’ll have to. I’d ruther stay out here and dish ice-cream. You go take my chair. That’s a good guy.” Maxwell smiled with sudden illumination, and lifted his eyes to find that Cornelia had heard the whole affair. “All right, old man, I’ll stay,” said the young man. “You win. Perhaps you’ll let me come into the kitchen afterwards and help clean up.” “Sure!” said Harry joyfully, with the tone of having found a pal. “We’ll be glad to have you, won’t we Cornie?” To himself Maxwell said: “It will be just as well to go later to see Evadne. Better in fact. I don’t want her to think I’m too keen. I can have more time to decide what to say to her. This is a good atmosphere in which to decide. Besides, I’m hungry and the dinner smells good. It would be ages before we got settled to eating at the roof garden or some cabaret. I’d have to go home and dress.” Then he became aware that Cornelia was speaking to him. Cornelia’s cheeks were red as roses, and there was a look in her laughing eyes as if tears were not far off; but she carried the thing off bravely, and declared that those things could be settled later; they really must sit down now, or the dinner would be spoiled. So they all sat down, and there was a moment’s awkward silence till Mr. Copley bowed his head and asked a blessing, Clytie and Brand openly staring the while. When it was over, Maxwell discovered the place card with “Harry” on it, and gravely deposited it in his vestpocket, saying in a low tone to Cornelia: “I shall make this up to him later.” “You mustn’t think you’re depriving him,” said Cornelia, smiling and lifting her spoon to the luscious cup of iced fruit. “He really has tried in every way he knew short of running away to get out of coming to the table. He knows he has me in a corner now, and he’s tremendously pleased; so don’t think another thing about it. Suppose you play you’re one of our old friends, and then it won’t worry you any more. It’s really awfully nice of you to come in this way.”