Then she flung up a defiant hand and laughed. The gay light laughter of the old Violet. “But I won’t let it! Never again! Never, never, never! Mums, come out and wrestle with Mansfield’s lost artistic sense.” She lifted Mrs. North, protesting shrilly, bodily out of her chair. “My dear Violet! Don’t! Oh, my hat!” she cried, and retreated, like a ruffled bird, to the looking-glass over the mantelshelf to rearrange her plumage. Violet seized her father by both hands and pulled him too out of his chair. “Come and play a game of croquet with me before the guests come, Herr Professor,” she said. It was her old name for him in the days when Karl von Schäde had brought many German expressions and titles into their midst. It struck North with a curious little unpleasant shock. “Why have you put poor Dick’s photo up here?” asked his wife. “Oh, do leave my things alone!” exclaimed North. His wife’s capacity for discovering and inquiring into any little thing he did not want to explain was phenomenal. It irritated him to see her pick up the frame. It irritated him that she would always speak of his dead friend as “poor Dick.” The atmosphere disturbed by Violet’s sudden radiant entrance became once more charged with electric irritation. Mrs. North put down the frame with a little click. “I thought it was some mistake of the servant’s,” she said stiffly. Violet pulled her father out of the French window. “Come, we have only time for half a game now,” she said. Mrs. North followed. “Your Miss Seer is coming this afternoon, Roger,” she said. “I do hope you won’t talk to no one else, if you intend to appear at all. It looks so bad, and only makes everyone talk!” With which parting shot she retreated towards Mansfield and the chairs. Violet slipped her arm through her father’s as they crossed the lawn. “She can’t help it, daddy,” she said soothingly. North laughed, a short mirthless laugh. “I suppose not. Go ahead, Vi. I’ll take blue.” They buried themselves in the game after the complete and concentrated manner of the real croquet player. Both were above the average, and it was an infinite relief to North to find Violet taking her old absorbing interest in his defeat.