"That's awfully kind of you," he said. "I feel tremendously smart." "You look festive," she admitted. "Blue suits you. I'm glad I happened to be in the garden when you arrived." There was only one obvious reply to this obvious speech. Matheson made it perfunctorily. "It is I who have the greater reason to be glad," he said. "I don't think any one has ever given me a flower before--certainly no one else has been kind enough to pin one in my coat." "I'm glad I'm the first," she said, and flashed another look at him, and walked on by his side. "I am not considered generous with my favours," she added mendaciously... "but the colour of the flower suggested you. I like blue eyes." Matheson laughed at that. "I prefer brown eyes," he said, and was amused at the smiling satisfaction of the brunette face close to his shoulder. "Well, of course," she returned, "one usually admires opposite colouring. That's only natural." Her speech somehow set him thinking of the fairest face he had ever seen. The picture of that fair face framed in the sunlit hair, with the dark woodwork of the old room for a background, was so vividly before him that it was not surprising his attention wandered from the empty little person at his side, whose flow of frivolous chatter went on uninterruptedly, and covered while it did not disguise the fact that he had grown suddenly dull. Then May appeared unexpectedly from behind some flowering shrubs, and took charge of him and conducted him to the tennis court, where Aplin and another man were playing singles, while Mrs Aplin sat in a rustic summer-house overlooking the court, a self-effacing chaperon, beaming complacently upon the young people, with an indulgent eye lit with maternal pride for her girls. There were no other girls present. As Rosie explained, if they invited too many people they never got any play themselves. It was all very jolly and homelike, Matheson considered. He played with both girls in turn. May lit a cigarette for him between the sets, and Mrs Aplin fussed over him during tea, and was confidential with him later in regard to her daughters' tastes and accomplishments and general amiability. "They are such favourites with _every one_," she confided with emphatic earnestness. "A friend whose girls are not popular asked me recently the secret of my training... what plans I adopted in bringing my girls up that made them so generally liked? I told her that I had brought them up to play games." She regarded Matheson quite seriously, with a gleam of satisfaction in her eyes. "They play games... every game... _well_. What more is required of a girl? All this nonsense about higher education... It's so unnecessary. And study is bad for the eyes; it makes girls frown; and a girl with a frown doesn't look so much studious as bad tempered. Let them play games and look nice; that's all that is requisite."