There was no question in this year of Lucy’s accompanying her husband to Glen Sporran. She was starting another baby and was firm about not wishing to go. Sibyl took this decision most amiably; said Lucy was quite wise, and further proposed that she should have Maud with her and care-take for Sibyl at Engledene House. Clitheroe was likewise to be left behind. His life in the Highlands was one long succession of dangerous colds and there wasn’t enough accommodation for his retinue of nurses; especially as every one you asked nowadays must have with them a maid or a valet. Clithy had grown so absurdly fond of Lucy that Sibyl suggested jocosely they should change babies. She thought little John a perfect darling—so like Roger—why hadn’t Lucy chosen her as god-mother instead of Maud? No doubt Clithy would grow up more like a normal boy when the rest of his features balanced Anne of Denmark’s nose.... Meantime, it was very fortunate things were as they were. And Lucy would oblige her enormously by looking after her boy while she was entertaining all those horrid people in the North. Not that the house-party was to be a large one. It ran away with so much money, and people were never grateful. There would just be Stacy Bream; the Honble. Victoria Masham, the Maid of Honour—old Vicky Long-i’-the-tooth, Sibyl called her behind her back, and never imagined the nickname could be repeated and counteract the expense of a month’s hospitality. _Must_ have Vicky to keep in touch, you know, with what the old Queen was saying and doing—and an acolyte of Stacy’s named Reggie, something in the Colonial Office—he could flirt with Vicky—and p’raps Arthur Broadmead. Then—for a day or two—that insufferable cad, Elijah Tooley—"but he’s so frightfully, frightfully rich and _might_ be useful." Aunt Christabel, of course, would come, to keep order, and Aggie Freebooter and Gertie Wentworth would make up the house-party. Aggie Freebooter was that tiresome Lady Towcester’s daughter—"one of six girls, my dear"—but when she was away from her mother’s eye she was deliciously larky and awfully plucky, and didn’t mind what you played at; while Gertie Wentworth—or the Honble. Gertrude—thirty-five, lots of money, dresses like a man, whisky and cigars, takes the bank at Roulette and loses everything but her temper. "Well, at any rate," said Maud, "I’m glad Willowby Patterne is not in the party, _this_ time...." "My dear!..." said Sibyl with a scream. "I’ve absolutely dropped him, after that row in the City and that extraordinary case in the courts which was compromised and hushed up. He’s gone out to East Africa. Haven’t you heard?"