“Where are the ladies?” I inquired, when the first edge of my appetite had been blunted and I had leisure to look about me. Menzies-Legh shifted his legs, which had been crossed. “They went to the station with Jellaby to see the last of him,” said he. “Indeed. All of them?” “I believe so.” Jellaby then, though he could not have the courtesy to say good-bye to me, could take a prolonged farewell of my wife and of the other members of our party. “He is not what we in our country would call a gentleman,” I said, after a silence during which I finished the third egg and regretted there were no more. “Who is not?” asked Menzies-Legh. “Jellaby. No doubt the term bounder would apply to him quite as well as to other people.” Menzies-Legh turned his sallow visage to me. “He’s a great friend of mine,” he said, the familiar scowl weighing down his eyebrows. I could not help smiling and shaking my head at that, all I had heard the night before so very fresh in my memory. “Ah, my dear sir,” I said, “be careful how you trust your great friends. Do not give way too lavishly to confidence. Belief in them is all very well, but it should not go beyond the limits of reason.” “He’s a great friend of mine,” repeated Menzies-Legh, raising his voice. “I wish then,” said I, “you would tell me what a bounder is.” He glowered at me a moment from beneath black brows. Then he said more quietly: “I’m not a slang dictionary. Suppose we talk seriously.” “Certainly,” said I, reaching out for the jam. He cleared his throat. “I got a lot of letters and telegrams last night,” he said. “How did you manage that?” I asked. “They were waiting for me at the post-office here. I had telegraphed for them to be forwarded. And I’m afraid--I’m sorry, but it’s inevitable--we shall have to be off.” “Off what?” said I, for a few of the more intimate English idioms still remained for me to master. “Off,” said he. “Go. Leave this.” “Oh,” said I. “Well, we are used to that. This tour, my dear sir, is surely the very essence of what you call being off. Where do we go next? I trust to a place with trees in it.” “You don’t understand, Baron. We don’t go anywhere next as far as the caravans are concerned. My wife and I are obliged to go home.” I was, of course, surprised. “We are, indeed,” said I, after a moment, “shrinking rapidly.” Then the thought of being rid of Mrs. Menzies-Legh and her John and Jellaby at, so to speak, one swoop, and continuing the tour purged of these baser elements with the tender lady entirely in our charge, made me unable to repress a smile of satisfaction. Menzies-Legh looked in his turn surprised. “I am glad,” he said, “that you don’t mind.” “My dear sir,” I said courteously, “of course I mind, and we shall miss you and your--er--er--” it was difficult on the spur of the moment to find an adjective, but Frau von Eckthum’s praises of her sister the night before coming into my mind I popped in the word suggested suggested--“angelic wife----”