Annabel looked puzzled. "We were talking of the Bible, not of the Peerage," she explained, as if the two words were of a similar nature and so apt to be confused with one another. And to her mind I believe they were. "Of course we were," said Fay; "how stupid of me to mix up the two!" Then she went on: "The forget-me-nots will be divine in a week or two!" (She was looking at the debatable bed from a becoming distance.) "A lovely blue pool that you will long to bathe in." Frank opened his mouth to reply, but I was too quick for him. "No further reference to Susanna, if you please," I said _sotto voce_, laying a firm hand on his arm: "this is no place for her." "I was thinking of her," he replied, with his bubbling laugh, "when Fay began about bathing in the pool." "I knew you were: that's why I stopped you." Frank's suppressed bubble continued. I wanted to join in it, but I daren't. "How exquisite the house looks from here," exclaimed Fay. "I do adore the rose-colour of the bricks that the Tudors used. They had a nice taste in bricks." "I think they were a jolly old rosy lot altogether," said Frank. "Took everything as _couleur de rose_, don't you know, till it got into their bones and their bricks!" Fay agreed with this sentiment. "I dare say that was it: a sort of Christian Science idea that if you thought your bricks were _couleur de rose_ they really became _couleur de rose_. And I suppose that is why all the new houses about London have that horrid yellow tinge: people nowadays look at everything through _blasé_, jaundiced eyes, and so everything is yellow to them, and eventually gets really yellow." "Perhaps you would like to see over the house," suggested Annabel. "It is considered one of the finest specimens of Tudor architecture in Kent, and has never been touched since the time of Henry the Eighth." "And to what do you attribute that neglect?--as the County Councillor asked when he was shown a house that hadn't been touched since the reign of Elizabeth," bubbled Frank. I admit I laughed then: I couldn't help it. "I knew you'd appreciate that," murmured he, confidentially slipping his arm into mine; "I've been saving it for days, but never remembered to get it off my chest when you were there. You see, you've got rather a strong Kingsnorth strain in you: it's a pity, but you can't help it, and when the Kingsnorth strain comes to the top, it's rather a waste of good material telling you anything really funny. You take so long being shocked, that by the time the shock has subsided the freshness of the joke has evaporated."