I turned and regarded her. Sitting easily in a chair to my right, and a little behind me, she was holding out to me a slip of paper. I took it mechanically but I did not look at it. "Don't move for a minute or two," I said. "You look absolutely splendid like that." She smiled. I rather think her frock was of linen--at any rate, it was blue. Her large straw hat was blue, too, and so were her smart French gloves and her dainty shoes; her ankles were very pretty, but her complexion was the thing: She had one of the clearest skins I have ever seen, and the delicate bloom of her cheeks was a wonder in itself. I could not well see her eyes, for she was sitting with her head thrown back--her gloved right hand behind it holding down the brim of her hat--and as she was looking at me and not up into the sky, they were almost hidden by their lids. Her left arm lay carelessly along the arm of the chair, and, her sleeve being loose and open, I could see half a dozen inches of warm pink arm. I just looked at her. "Done?" she said. "Not quite." I have said before, and I say again, that girls of this type ought not to be allowed to raise their eyebrows and smile faintly at the same moment. It amounts to a technical assault. I fancy she saw me set my teeth, for the next moment she put up her left hand and bent the broad blue rim over her face. "Early closing day," she said. I contemplated her ankles in silence. After a minute: "Well?" said my companion from behind the brim. "I hate it when the blinds are down," said I, "but--" "But what?" "Happily, they are only short blinds. In other words, just as the ostrich, when pursued, is said to thrust its head into the sand, believing--" "And now please can I be shown over the house?" I glanced at the order-to-view which she had handed me. It referred to The Grange, which stood in its own grounds about half a mile away. Its lodge gates were rather like ours. The same mistake had been made before. "The agent at Bettshanger gave me that to-day, and I motored over this afternoon. The car's outside. I was walking up the drive--how pretty it all is!--when I saw you asleep here. I suppose I ought to have gone up to the house really, but it looked so nice and cool here that I came and sat down instead and waited for you to wake." "I'm so glad you did." "Why?" "Well, you see, they're rather a queer lot up there at the house--might have said you couldn't see over, or something." She opened her big eyes. "But I've got an order." "That's the worst of it. They'll take orders from no one. Once they'd caught sight of it, you would have been blindfolded and led back to the village by a circuitous route." "Nonsense!" "It's a fact. But I'll show you round, all right. Anything I can tell you about the place before we move?" She regarded me suspiciously. Then: "Is there a billiard-room?" she said.