“But not that Lady Sunningdale goes to sleep after lunch. At least I don’t see how!” Stella laughed too. “You put it down to mere lunch?” she said. “But if one were disagreeable one might suggest that it was the conversation at lunch, not lunch itself, that led to the desire for repose. How rude of me!” Martin looked across to the cedar; he was quite willing that Lady Sunningdale’s need for repose should not yet be satisfied. “But I thought you settled that it was your efforts to amuse her that produced that result,” he said. The sound of Stella’s laughter perhaps roused Lady Sunningdale, for she moved in her chair and suddenly sat bolt upright. “Ah, she is awake,” said Stella. “We can peashoot each other no longer. What a pity!” “But that at least is very polite of you,” said Martin, rising. “And that is very modest,” she answered. “It might have been true.” Shrill, staccato cries came from the cedar as the two walked back across the hot velvet of the lawn. “Stella dear, it is too bad of you,” shrieked Lady Sunningdale. “I send for my own particular young man and you monopolize him all the afternoon. Martin, you perfidious monster. What do you mean by flirting with Stella under my very eyes? Did I close them a moment? I think I must have. Is it not tea-time? Where is Sahara? There is a terrible black dog of Flints’s. My dear, it is too hot for words, and have you walked all the way from the terrible parsonage to see me? That is too sweet of you. What have you and Stella been talking about? Stella dearest, if you would whistle three or four times for Sahara. Martin, Frank Yorkshire is here. So odd, two counties in the same house in another county. Is not geography detestable? Yes. I sat next your father last night. I don’t think I ever saw anybody so unlike as you two. I don’t think that’s grammar. Stella, you went fast asleep, I thought, in that chair, and when I woke up, I found it was me in the other. Where _are_ the dogs? Martin, the ‘Götterdämmerung,’ was too exquisite! Ternina! Floods, I assure you--I wept floods, and at the critical moment I tugged at my necklace, and it broke, and a large pearl fell into the trombone below. Why did you not come up to town, as I told you, for it? Not the pearl,--do not be so foolish.” Her slumber had slightly dishevelled Lady Sunningdale, and as she poured forth this surprising nonsense she effected various small repairs and generally made the crooked straight. Sahara, the delinquent dachshund, recalled by shrill whistling from Stella, waddled pathetically up to her, and a violent wagging of heliotrope in a flower-bed near probably indicated the locality of Suez Canal.