No, George’s brain was not a subtle organ. It never occurred to him for a moment that his sudden importance was merely owing to the fact that he was his sister’s brother. He accepted Monica’s interest in his opinion as a tribute to his own worth, and as he received very few tributes of that nature was correspondingly delighted. Somebody once said something about ignorance and wisdom, turning a neat phrase upon the advisability in certain cases of the one and the drawbacks attendant upon the other. He might have applied his aphorism to George that morning. In his folly George expanded like a flower in the sun, and looked back with incredulous astonishment to the remote time when he had brooded sorrowfully upon radiators and petrol-tanks in connection with this extraordinarily nice young person. A very pleasant morning was spent. George and Monica were not the only two people to spend a pleasant morning. Cynthia did also in her way, and Mr. Doyle and Guy too, were not ill-pleased with it, though their enjoyment was not wholly unmixed. It was one thing to realise the use to them of Alan’s presence; it was another to obtain a monopoly of it. For Alan was sorely torn. On the one hand was a perfectly topping murder mystery, right on the premises, which, of course, demanded the most breathless and undivided attention; on the other, within only a few yards was a real genuine chorus-girl, who was going away that same afternoon; and Alan was naturally a good deal interested in chorus-girls, as befitted a young man of fourteen. There is a ring about the word “chorus-girl.” One wonders whether it will ever quite outlive its naughty Victorian associations. The chorus-girl of to-day is more respectable than a churchwarden, more straight than a straight line (though having more breadth to her length; even to-day, one gathers, some chorus-girls are tolerably broad-minded), more refined than Grade “A” petrol—or so we are earnestly given to understand by those who ought to know. Yet still in clubs and places where men gather, the bare mention of the word is enough to provoke the knowing wink and the cunning dig in the ribs. And where the clubs wink the public schools guffaw; there is no place where tradition is so strong as a public school. It gave Alan a pleasurable feeling of doggishness just to enter the room where Dora was sedately reading a magazine; to sit on the same couch with her was sheer daredevilry.