"And you don't care a bit, you very imperturbable atom! I think I shall take you home with me to luncheon. You amuse me." She amused _me_. She was a darling--so gay, so light, as if she didn't care about anything, and had never had a stomach-ache in her whole life. If George's high-up friends are like this, I don't wonder he prefers them to Aunt Gerty. Mother can be as amusing as anybody,--I am not going to try to take Mother down--but even she can't pretend she is happy as this woman seemed to be. She was like champagne,--the very dry kind George opens a bottle of when he is down, and gives Mother and me a whole glassful between us. We were quite in a town now, and on a soft pavement made of wood, like my bedroom floor. The streets, oddly enough, grew grander and narrower. She told me about the houses as we went along. "That is where my uncle, the Duke of Frocester, lives," she said, and pointed to a kind of grey tomb, with a paved courtyard in a very tiny street. I knew that name--the name of the man George stays and shoots with--but of course I didn't say anything. Then we passed a funny little house in a smaller street called after a chapel, and there was a fanlight over the door, and a great extinguisher thing on the railings. "You have no idea what a lovely place that is inside," she told me. "A great friend of mine lives there, and pulled it about. He took out all the inside of the house, and made false walls to the rooms. One of them has just the naked bricks and mortar showing, but then the mortar is all gilt. He always has quantities of flowers, great arum lilies shining in the gloom, and oleanders in pots, and stunted Japanese trees. He gives heavenly tea-parties and little suppers after the play. He writes plays, but somehow they have never been acted that I know of? Bachelors always do you so well. I declare, if I wasn't going to see him this very afternoon at my club, I would go in and surprise him, now that I have got you with me, you little elf! You have certainly got the widest open eyes I ever saw. He is probably in there now, working at his little table in the window, getting up the notes for his lecture, so we should put him out abominably. I will take you to the lecture instead. And remind me to lend you one of his books,--that is, if your mother allows you to read novels." I explained to her that I was a little off novels, as my father kept us on them.