For the new Lady Burdon had been wrong in estimating any humour in the grimace with which he had looked at her after turning away, while she told him he must _buck up_. CHAPTER IV A FORETASTE OF THE PEERAGE I A worrying morning foreshadowed--or might have foreshadowed--to Egbert Hunt the strain and distress of the afternoon whose effect upon him we have seen. Normally his master was closeted in the study with the three young men who read with him for University examinations; his mistress engaged first in her household duties, then in her customary run on her bicycle before lunch; shopping, taking some flowers to the cottage hospital, exchanging the magazines for which her circle subscribed. These occupations of master and mistress enabled Egbert to evade with nice calculation the tasks that fell to him. This morning the household, as he expressed it, was "all of a boilin' jump," whereby he was vastly incommoded, being much harried. The three young men thoughtfully denied themselves the intellectual delights of their usual labours with Mr. Letham. "Lucky dawgs," said Egbert bitterly, hiding in the bathroom and watching them from the window meet down the road, confer, laugh, and skim off on their bicycles; his mistress--writing letters, talking excitedly with her husband--did everything except settle to any particular task. The result was to keep Egbert ceaselessly upon "the 'op," and he resented it utterly. II With the afternoon the visitors; the satisfying at last of the excitement that had thrilled Miller's Field to the marrow since the newspapers were opened. A little difficult, the good ladies thought it, to know exactly what to say. Some, on greeting Mrs. Letham, boldly plumped: "My dear, I _do_ congratulate you!" At the other extreme of tact in grasping a novel situation, those who cleverly began, "My dear, I saw it in the 'Morning Post'!" a wary opening that enabled one to model sentiments on the lead given in reply. "My dear, I _do_ congratulate you!" "My dear, I saw it in the 'Morning Post'!" and "Ho, _do_ yer, thenk yer!" from bone-tired Egbert, mimicking as he closed the door behind the one; and "Ho, _did_ yer, boil yer!" closing it behind the other. Between these forms, then, or with slight variations upon them, fell all the salutations but that of Mrs. Savile-Phillips who, arriving late, treading on Egbert's foot in her impressive halt on the threshold, called in her dashing way across the crowded drawing-room, "And where is Lady Burdon?"