Andy Hayes' _début_ in the House of Commons was not, of course, sensational; very few members witnessed it, and nobody outside took the smallest heed of it. Moreover, like other beginnings of his, it was unpremeditated, in a manner forced upon him. He had not intended to speak that afternoon, or indeed at all in his first session, but in Committee one day an honourable gentleman opposite went so glaringly astray as to the prices ruling for bacon in Wiltshire in the year nineteen hundred and something--which Andy considered a salient epoch in the chequered history of his pet commodity--that he was on his feet before he knew what he was doing, and set the matter right, adding illustrative figures for the year before and the year after, with a modestly worded forecast of the run of prices for the current year. Engrossed in the subject, he remembered that the House was a formidable place only after he had sat down; then he hurried home to his books, found that his figures were correct, and heaved a sigh of satisfaction. It was no small thing to get his maiden speech made without meaning to make it--and to find the figures correct! He attempted nothing more that session. He only listened. But how he listened! A man might talk the greatest nonsense, yet Andy's steady eyes would be on him, and Andy's big head untiringly poised at attention. What was the use of listening to so much nonsense? Well, first you had to be sure it was nonsense; then to see why it was nonsense; thirdly, to see how, being nonsense, it was received; fourthly, to revolve how it should be exposed. There were even other things that Andy found to ponder over in all the nonsense to which he listened--and many more, of course, in the sense. But even Andy took a holiday from public affairs sometimes, nay more, sometimes from the fortunes of Gilbert Foot and Co. He was in the office this morning--the Saturday before Whitsunday--finishing up some odd jobs which his partner had left to him (Gilly had still a trick of doing that), but his thoughts were on Meriton, whither he was to repair in the afternoon. As he mused on Meriton, he slowly shook the big head, thereby indicating not despair or even despondency, but a recognition that he was engaged on rather a difficult job, perhaps on a game that he was not very good at, but which had to be won all the same. This particular game certainly had to be won; his whole heart was in it. Yet now he was accusing himself of a mistake; he had been impatient--impatient that Vivien should still be less than happy, that she should still dwell in gloom with gloomy Wellgood, that she would not yet come into the sunshine. Well, he would put the mistake right that very day, for Vivien was to lunch with him, attended by the Nun, with whom she had been spending a night or two in town; and then the three of them were to go to Meriton in the motor-car together. The Nun was not singing at this time.