"Room! Certainly. I didn't tell her you were coming, because if you hadn't, the kids would have been horribly disappointed. She and Eileen are giving a shindy for Gladys--that's Gerald's new acquisition, you know. So if you don't mind butting into a baby-show we'll run down. It's only the younger bunch from Hitherwood House and Brookminster. What do you say, Phil?" Selwyn said that he would go--hesitating before consenting. A curious feeling of age and grayness had suddenly come over him--a hint of fatigue, of consciousness that much of life lay behind him. Yet in his face and in his bearing he could not have shown much of it, though at his deeply sun-burned temples the thick, close-cut hair was silvery; for Austin said with amused and at the same time fretful emphasis: "How the devil you keep the youth" in your face and figure I don't understand! I'm only forty-five--that's scarcely eight years older than you are! And look at my waistcoat! And look at my hair--I mean where the confounded ebb has left the tide-mark! Gad, I'd scarcely blame Eileen for thinking you qualified for a cradle-snatcher. . . . And, by the way, that Gladys girl is more of a woman than you'd believe. I observe that Gerald wears that peculiarly speak-easy-please expression which is a healthy sign that he's being managed right from the beginning." "I had an idea she was all right," said Selwyn, smiling. "Well, she is. People will probably say that she 'made' Gerald. However," added Austin modestly, "I shall never deny it--though you know what part I've had in the making and breaking of him, don't you?" "Yes," replied Selwyn, without a smile. Austin went to the telephone and called up his house at Silverside, saying that he'd be down that evening with a guest. Nina got the message just as she had arranged her tables; but woman is born to sorrow and heiress to all the unlooked-for idiocies of man. "Dear," she said to Eileen, the tears of uxorial vexation drying unshed in her pretty eyes, "Austin has thought fit to seize upon this moment to bring a man down to dinner. So if you are dressed would you kindly see that the tables are rearranged, and then telephone somebody to fill in--two girls, you know. The oldest Craig girl might do for one. Beg her mother to let her come." Eileen was being laced, but she walked to the door of Nina's room, followed by her little Alsatian maid, who deftly continued her offices _en route_. "Whom is Austin bringing?" she asked. "He didn't say. Can't you think of a second girl to get? Isn't it vexing! Of course there's nobody left--nobody ever fills in in the country. . . . Do you know, I'll be driven into letting Drina sit up with us!--for sheer lack of material. I suppose the little imp will have a fit if I suggest it, and probably perish of indigestion to-morrow."