“Jolly good!” murmured Kay, impressed. “That is why, Mr. President and gentlemen, though I am glad, delighted, pleased, happy and--er--overjoyed to see so many of you responding to the annual call of our dear old school, I am not surprised.” From the kitchen door, a small knife in one hand and a half-peeled onion in the other, there emerged the stocky figure of Claire Lippett. She gazed up at the window wrathfully. “Hi!” “No, not surprised.” “Hi!” “And talking of being surprised, I am reminded of a little story which may be new to some of you present here to-night. It seems that a certain Irishman----” From the days when their ancestresses had helped the menfolk of the tribe to make marauding Danes wish they had stayed in Denmark, the female members of Claire Lippett’s family had always been women of action. Having said “Hi!” twice, their twentieth-century descendant seemed to consider that she had done all that could reasonably be expected of her in the way of words. With a graceful swing of her right arm, she sent the onion shooting upward. And such was the never-failing efficiency of this masterly girl that it whizzed through the open window, from which, after a brief interval, there appeared, leaning out, the dress-shirted and white-tied upper portion of Mr. Willoughby Braddock. He was rubbing his ear. “Be quiet, can’t you?” said Miss Lippett. Mr. Braddock gazed austerely into the depths. Except that the positions of the characters were inverted and the tone of the dialogue somewhat different, it might have been the big scene out of _Romeo and Juliet_. “What did you say?” “I said be quiet. Miss Kay wants to get a bit of sleep. How can she get a bit of sleep with that row going on?” “Clara!” said Mr. Braddock portentously. “Claire,” corrected the girl coldly, insisting on a point for which she had had to fight all her life. Mr. Braddock gulped. “I shall--er--I shall speak to your mother,” he said. It was a futile threat, and Claire signified as much by jerking her shoulder in a scornful and derogatory manner before stumping back to the house with all the honours of war. She knew--and Mr. Braddock knew that she knew--that complaints respecting her favourite daughter would be coldly received by Mrs. Lippett. Mr. Braddock withdrew from the window, and presently appeared in the garden, beautifully arrayed. “Why, Willoughby,” said Kay admiringly, “you look wonderful!” The kindly compliment did much to soothe Mr. Braddock’s wounded feelings. “No, really?” he said; and felt, as he had so often felt before, that Kay was a girl in a million, and that if only the very idea of matrimony did not scare a fellow so confoundedly, a fellow might very well take a chance and see what would happen if he asked her to marry him. “And the speech sounded fine.” “Really? You know, I got a sudden fear that my voice might not carry.” “It carries,” Kay assured him.