Simon Hermyre, Lady Scilly's best friend, was Peter Ball's best man. He had met Ariadne at the Scillys', but at Christina's wedding he said that he should not have known her again. He began to take some notice of her. She at once asked him to call, and it was a great mistake, for he never did. It is awkward for Ariadne, I admit, for Mother not going out, and George being perfectly useless as a father, she has to do all her own asking. That can't be helped, but Ariadne is always hasty and strikes while the iron is too hot. Simon Hermyre did _rather_ like her, but he wasn't quite sure that he actually wanted to take her on, and all that that means--and whether he liked her enough to risk making Lady Scilly angry about it, as of course she would be. At all events he didn't come--his chief kept him in till six o'clock every day, or some excuse of that sort. As if a man couldn't always manage a call if he wanted to, even if he were third secretary to some one in the planet Mars! CHAPTER XII We never used to go away for more than a week every summer to Brighton or Herne Bay, but now that we live in the heart of the town, as of course St. John's Wood is, it has been decided that we want a whole month at the sea. This year Mother and Aunt Gerty chose Whitby in Yorkshire. It is convenient for Aunt Gerty--something about a company that she is thinking of joining in the autumn. George didn't care where we went, as he isn't to be with us. He just forks out the money as Mother asks for it; he trusts her implicitly not to waste it, and to do things as cheap as they can be done and yet decently, because after all we _are_ his family, and everybody knows that now. I sometimes think he would come with us himself, if Aunt Gerty wasn't so much about. Ariadne and Aunt Gerty haven't got an ounce of country fibre in them. They get at loggerheads with the country at once. The mildest cows chase them, they manage to nearly drown themselves in the tiniest ditches, the quietest old pony rears if they drive him. If they pick a mushroom it is sure to be a toadstool; if they bite into a pear there's a wasp inside it; if they take hold of a village baby they are sure to drop it. They haven't country good manners, they leave gates open, they trample down grass, they entice dogs away, they startle geese and set hens running, and offend everybody all round.