He never interferes, he trusts me, he likes me. He is the son of Sir Edward Fynes of Barsom, and they keep horses. I might say they eat horses and drink horses and sleep on horses there. Ernie wants me to like him, so he brought me a list of his father's yearlings, with their names and weights and what they fetched at the sale written out in his own hand. It interested him, so he thought it would interest me. It must have taken him hours to do, and when he put it into my hand, and ran away, what amusement do you think I could get out of this sort of thing? Witch, ch. f. (II.B.), 2 yrs., Mr. Brooks, 21 guins. Milkmaid (h.h.), 3 yrs., " Wingate, 30 guins. Sappho (H.B. + ch.f.), Foal, 6 yrs., Lord Manham, 35 guins. And so on for a page of foolscap. Rather an odd sort of love-letter, but I saw he meant it, and didn't tease him. Ernie and I moon about all the evening and watch the others. It is not etiquette to interfere with a lady who has her own cavalier, and that is why I annex Ernie, as Lady Scilly does Simon. We don't dance. I don't care to begin the dance racket till I am out and forced, not I, nor do I suppose the grown-ups want a couple of children getting into their legs and throwing them down. No, I watch them, and Ernie watches me. Simon Hermyre and Lady Scilly dance half the time together. I suppose it is _de rigueur_. And when they are not dancing they are talking of money. I have heard them. I don't mind listening, for, of course, money isn't private. And I think it revolting to talk business on moonlight nights by the sea. They argue about bulls and bears and berthas, which puzzled me at first, till Ernie told me they did not mean either animals or women. Simon is not at all interested in any of them. Ernie (who is at Eton) says it is because he has nothing on, and only talks about stocks to please her. Simon does not talk about dirty money when he is with my sister, he does not talk much about anything, and yet they seem to be enjoying themselves. Perhaps Ariadne is a rest after Lady Scilly? One damp evening, Ariadne and he came out of the big hall together, but before she sat down in her white dress on one of the iron seats outside, Simon carefully wiped it with his handkerchief, though it hadn't been raining. Then, without thinking apparently, he put it up to his own forehead. "Phew! I'm hot," he said. "It's a weary old world! Hope I die soon!" Simon talks broad Yorkshire, I notice. Lady Scilly had been Simon's partner before Ariadne, and I had passed with my boy--that's what the grown-up women always call their special men!--just as Simon had taken out his nice gold-backed pocket-book with his initials in diamonds that I envy him so. "Blow these wretched figures! They won't come!" I heard him say.