As for Miss Vi Vassity, to whom I also turned, I saw her common, clever, vivacious face lighted up with a variety of expressions: amusement, curiosity, irony. She knew, as well as I did, what was happening. She was keener than I to see what would happen next. In far less time than it takes to tell all this Miss Million had rattled on: "Oh, yes; Mr. Burke was with uncle in Chicago pretty near every day all the last year of his life, wasn't you, Mr. Burke? Shows how well he used to know him, doesn't it? And then when he heard my name at the Hotel Sizzle! "Soon as he heard that I was related to Mr. Samuel Million, his old friend, he came round and chummed up at once. It is funny, isn't it," concluded Miss Million, "the queer way you get to know people that you've never dreamt about?" "Yes, it's real funny, I guess, that I haven't happened to have gotten to know Mr. Burke while he was on the other side," broke in the voice of the American, speaking quietly but very distinctly as it "gave away" the pretensions of the Honourable Jim in two simple sentences. "I guess there wasn't a day in the last two years that I wasn't visiting the old man. And I never heard anything about a sprained ankle, nor yet about his having had any Mr. Burke to come around and see him." After this revelation there was a pause that seemed to last for ever. But I suppose it couldn't have been as long as that. For I, turning my eyes from the quartette on the turf, was watching a big white seagull wheeling and swooping above the cliff. Its long wings had only flapped, slowly, twice, before the hearty voice of Miss Vi Vassity broke the silence that I felt to be quite nerve-racking. "Well! Are these biographical notes going to keep us busy for the whole afternoon, or are we going to get on to the spirit-kettle and the cakes? "I'm fair dying for a drop to drink, I can tell you. Talkin' does it. And I never can bear those flasks. Don't trust 'em. Some careless hussy forgets to give 'em a proper clean-out once in a way, and the next time you take your cup o' tea out of the thing where are you? Poisoned and a week in a nursing-home. Miss Vi Vassity, 'London's Love,' has been sufferin' from a severe attack of insideitis, with cruel remarks from _Snappy Bits_ on the subject. Give me hot water out of the kettle. "Come on, Jim, you shall get it going; you're a handy man with your feet--fingers, I mean; come on, Miss Smith. The other girls seem to have lost themselves somewhere; always do when there's a bit of housework and women's sphere going on, I notice. We'll spread the festive board. Nellie'll bring on the cousin--I can see they've got secrets to talk. S'long!" She kept up this babble during the whole of tea in the lee of that motor on the downs where Mr. Burke had come upon me as I drowsed after lunch.