Mrs. Odd was speaking as he entered the room. "I don't really see, Mary, what duty has got to do with it." Without turning her head, she turned her eyes on Odd: "How wet your hair is, Peter!" Mary Odd looked up from the review she was cutting rather grimly, and her cold face was irradiated with a sudden smile. "Well, Peter," she said quietly. "I fished a little girl out of the river," said Odd, taking a seat near Alicia, and smiling responsively at his sister. "Captain Archinard's little girl." He told the story. "An interesting contrast of physical and moral courage." "I have seen the children. They are noticeable children. They always ride to hounds." Hunting had been Miss Odd's favorite diversion during her father's lifetime. "But the pretty one, as I remember, has not the pluck of her sister--physical, as you say, Peter, no doubt." "What sort of a person is Mrs. Archinard?" "Very pretty, very lazy, very selfish. She is an American, and was rich, I believe. Captain Archinard left the army when he married her, and immediately spent her money. Luckily for him poor Mr. Archinard died--Jack Archinard; you remember him, Peter? A nice man. I go to see Mrs. Archinard now and then. I don't care for her." "You don't care much for any one, Mary," said Mrs. Odd, smiling. "Your remarks on your Allersley neighbors are very pungent and very true, no doubt. People are so rarely perfect, and you only tolerate perfection." "Yet I have many friends, Alicia." "Not near Allersley?" "Yes; I think I count Mrs. Hartley-Fox, Mrs. Maynard, Lady Mainwaring, and Miss Hibbard among my friends." "Mrs. Maynard is the old lady with the caps, isn't she? What big caps she does wear! Lady Mainwaring I remember in London, trying to marry off her eighth daughter. You told me, I recollect, that she was an inveterate matchmaker." "She has no selfish eagerness, if that is what you understood me to mean." "But she does interfere a great deal with the course of events, when events are marriageable young men, doesn't she?" "Does she?" "Well, you said she was a matchmaker, Mary. There was no disloyalty in saying so, for it is known by every one who knows Lady Mainwaring." "And, therefore, my friends are not, and need not be, perfect." During this little conversation, Odd sat with the unhappy, helpless look men wear when their women-kind are engaged in such contests. "I am awfully hungry. Isn't it almost lunch-time?" he said, as they paused. Mrs. Odd looked at her watch. "It only wants five minutes." Odd walked to the window and looked out at the sweep of lawn, with its lime-trees and copper beeches. The flower-beds were in all their glory. "How well the mignonette is getting on, Mary," he said, looking down at the fragrant greenness that came to the window. Alicia got up and joined her husband, putting her arm through his.