And Mrs. Malwood also was at a loss for adjectives. And when, presently, Rip Van Winkle appeared, smiling and sun-tanned to join what he expected to be a jovial group, he found a strange silence and a most uncomfortable air of jarring temperaments. He was well accustomed to these little parties of Feo’s and to watch her at work with new men whom she collected on her way through life. Usually they were rather riotous affairs, filled with mirth and daring. What in the name of all that was wonderful had happened to this one? He joined his son and put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Gibbie,” he said, “enlighten me.” But he got no explanation from this young man, who seemed to be like a bird whose wings had been cut. “My dear Father,” he said, “I’ve no sympathy with Feo’s little pranks. She and the Malwood girl seem to have picked up a bounder and a shivering Welsh terrier this time, and even they probably regret it. I ran over this afternoon to yarn with you, as a matter of fact. Come on, let’s get out of this. Let’s go down to the stream and sit under the trees and have it out.” And so they left together, unnoticed by that disconcerted foursome with whose little games fate had had the impudence to interfere. And presently, seated on the bank of the brook which ran through the lower part of the park, Lord Gilbert Jermyn, ex-major Royal Air Force, D. S. O., M. C., got it off his chest. “O God,” he began, “how fed up I am with this infernal peace.” The old man gazed at his son with amazement. “I don’t follow you,” he said. “Peace? My dear lad, we have all been praying for it and we haven’t got it yet.” The boy, and he was nothing more than that, sat with rounded shoulders and a deep frown on his face, hunched up, flicking pieces of earth into the bubbling water.