“But you see now,” said Mr. Brumley, with a detaining grip, “it’s unavoidable.” And the next moment Sir Isaac was mumbling his appreciations of the introduction. I must admit that Lady Beach-Mandarin was almost as much to meet as one can meet in a single human being, a broad abundant billowing personality with a taste for brims, streamers, pennants, panniers, loose sleeves, sweeping gestures, top notes and the like that made her altogether less like a woman than an occasion of public rejoicing. Even her large blue eyes projected, her chin and brows and nose all seemed racing up to the front of her as if excited by the clarion notes of her abundant voice, and the pinkness of her complexion was as exuberant as her manners. Exuberance—it was her word. She had evidently been a big, bouncing, bright gaminesque girl at fifteen, and very amusing and very much admired; she had liked the rôle and she had not so much grown older as suffered enlargement—a very considerable enlargement. “Ah!” she cried, “and so I’ve caught you at home, Mr. Brumley! And, poor dear, you’re at my mercy.” And she shook both his hands with both of hers. That was before Mr. Brumley introduced Sir Isaac, a thing he did so soon as he could get one of his hands loose and wave a surviving digit or so at that gentleman. “You see, Sir Isaac,” she said, taking him in, in the most generous way; “I and Mr. Brumley are old friends. We knew each other of yore. We have our jokes.” Sir Isaac seemed to feel the need of speech but got no further than a useful all-round noise. “And one of them is that when I want him to do the least little thing for me he hides away! Always. By a sort of instinct. It’s such a Small thing, Sir Isaac.” Sir Isaac was understood to say vaguely that they always did. But he had become very indistinct. “Aren’t I always at your service?” protested Mr. Brumley with a responsive playfulness. “And I don’t even know what it is you want.” Lady Beach-Mandarin, addressing herself exclusively to Sir Isaac, began a tale of a Shakespear Bazaar she was holding in an adjacent village, and how she knew Mr. Brumley (naughty man) meant to refuse to give her autographed copies of his littlest book for the Book Stall she was organizing. Mr. Brumley confuted her gaily and generously. So discoursing they made their way to the verandah where Lady Harman had so lately “poured.” Sir Isaac was borne along upon the lady’s stream of words in a state of mulish reluctance, nodding, saying “Of course” and similar phrases, and wishing he was out of it all with an extreme manifestness. He drank his tea with unmistakable discomfort, and twice inserted into the conversation an entirely irrelevant remark that he had to be going. But Lady Beach-Mandarin had her purposes with him and crushed these quivering tentatives.