“They brought me here in tea chests,” he continued earnestly, “disguised as a Chinese idol. It was a terrible humiliation. The Empress-mother in Pekin, who gives audiences, is a painted doll with a gramophone inside her, which quite accounts for her remarkably accurate memory.” Mr. Steele overheard this singular statement. “Really, Mr. Simpson,” he said in stern tones, “I must beg you not to poke fun at Mr. Trevelyan.” “Trevelyan!” cried the nice-looking man at the other end, bending forward in his chair to see Bob’s face. “Did you say Trevelyan?” “Yes,” Bob answered, also leaning forward--“that’s my name. Why?” “It’s mine too,” answered the other excitedly. “Are you Dorset or Lincolnshire?” “Dorsetshire,” Bob answered promptly. Every one was listening now, and Mr. Steele seemed very anxious, to judge by his face. “If you were a Lincolnshire Trevelyan I’d break your neck directly after dinner,” observed the nice-looking man, and he suddenly grew calm again, and seemed to take no further interest in Bob. The latter began to understand; and when the Empress of China suddenly dissolved in tears and repeated that hers was a very, very sad story, he had no doubts left as to where he and his friends were. At this point the Rev. Mr. Weede pointed a thin finger at Lady Dorothy, and addressed the company in pulpit tones. “Providence,” he said, “in its inscrutable wisdom, has been pleased to afflict our dear sister with the delusion that she entered these consecrated precincts in a balloon. The prayers of the congregation are requested for--” “Mr. Weede,” cried Mr. Steele in ringing tones, “I must insist that you do not indulge in jests unworthy of a gentleman and not befitting your cloth!” The young golfing clergyman smiled blandly, quite unabashed, and answered in a single syllable, sharp and clear--“Fore!” At this wholly unexpected and irrelevant retort, Anne Trevelyan broke into a laugh. “One to the parson!” observed Jocelyn in an undertone. Things might have ended then, but at this moment an old gentleman with a very beautiful white beard and smooth snowy hair began to sing to himself a music-hall song of forty years ago in a thin and quavering tenor voice: “Up in a balloon, boys, up in a balloon, All among the little stars, sailing round the moon!” “Silence!” roared Mr. Steele from the head of the table. The old gentleman broke down under the rebuke, and began to weep piteously. “I know my voice isn’t what it was,” he whined, between his sobs--“when I used to sing the late Mr. Gladstone to sleep, after his great speeches--‘Lullaby baby, on the tree-top.’” He began to sing again, through his tears. Mr. Steele struck the table with his fist. “Stop that immediately!” he shouted. “Lady Dorothy--Miss Trevelyan,” he continued, in the silence that followed, “I don’t know what you must think! The thunderstorm is to blame----”