This year his choice of a summer residence had fallen upon Layton Court, with its Jacobean gables, its lattice windows, and its oak-panelled rooms. Mr. Stanworth was thoroughly satisfied with Layton Court. He had been installed there for rather more than a month, and the little party now in full swing was the second of the summer’s series. His sister-in-law, Lady Stanworth, always acted as hostess for him on these occasions. Neither Roger nor Alec had had any previous acquaintance with their host; and their inclusion in the party had been due to a chain of circumstances. Mrs. Shannon, an old friend of Lady Stanworth’s, had been asked in the first place; and with her Barbara. Then Mr. Stanworth had winked jovially at his sister-in-law and observed that Barbara was getting a deuced pretty girl in these days, and wasn’t there any particular person she would be glad to see at Layton Court, eh? Lady Stanworth had given it as her opinion that Barbara might not be displeased to encounter a certain Mr. Alexander Grierson about the place; whereupon Mr. Stanworth, having ascertained in a series of rapid questions that Mr. Alexander Grierson was a young man of considerable worldly possessions (which interested him very much), had played cricket three years running for Oxford (which interested him still more), and was apparently a person of unimpeachable character and morals (which did not interest him at all), had given certain injunctions; with the result that two days later Mr. Alexander Grierson received a charming little note, to which he had hastened to reply with gratified alacrity. As to Roger, it had come somehow to Mr. Stanworth’s ears (as in fact things had a habit of doing) that he was a close friend of Alec’s; and there was always room in any house which happened to be occupied by Mr. Stanworth for a person of the world-wide reputation and attainments of Roger Sheringham. A second charming little note had followed in the wake of the first. Roger had been delighted with Mr. Stanworth. He was a man after his own heart, this jolly old gentleman, with his interesting habit of pressing half-crown cigars and pre-war whiskey on one at all hours of the day from ten in the morning onwards; his red, genial face, always on the point of bursting into loud, whole-hearted laughter if not actually doing so; his way of poking sly fun at his dignified, aristocratic sister-in-law; and the very faint trace of a remote vulgarity about him that only seemed, in his particular case, to add a more intimate, almost a more genuine note to his dealings with one. Yes, Roger had found old Mr. Stanworth a character well worth studying. In the three days since they had first met their acquaintance had developed rapidly into something that was very near to friendship.