“If you really want me to, of course.”

“I do. This is my hobby. I’ll arrange it. He can come down to you at Condaford. I must get back now and see ‘Snubby’ off. Have you proposed to him yet?”

“I read him to sleep last night with Hubert’s diary. He dislikes me intensely. I daren’t ask him anything. Is he really ‘a big noise,’ Uncle Lawrence?”

Sir Lawrence nodded mysteriously. “Snubby,” he said, “is the ideal public man. He has practically no feelers, and his feelings are always connected with Snubby. You can’t keep a man like him down; he will always be there or thereabouts. India-rubber. Well, well, the State needs him. If we were all thin-skinned, who would sit in the seats of the mighty? They are hard, Dinny, and full of brass tacks. So you’ve wasted your time?”

“I think I’ve tied a second string to my bow.”

“Excellent. Hallorsen’s off too. I like that chap. Very American, but sound wood.”

He left her, and, unwilling to encounter again either the india-rubber or the sound wood, Dinny went up to her room.

Next morning by ten o’clock, with the rapidity peculiar to the break-up of house-parties, Fleur and Michael were bearing Adrian and Diana off to Town in their car; the Muskhams had departed by train, and the Squire and Lady Henrietta were motoring across country to their Northamptonshire abode; Aunt Wilmet and Dinny alone were left, but the Tasburghs were coming to lunch and bringing their father.

“He’s amiable, Dinny,” said Lady Mont: “Old School, very courtly, says ‘Nevah,’ ‘Evah,’ like that. It’s a pity they’ve no money. Jean is strikin’, don’t you think?”

“She scares me a little, Aunt Em; knows her own mind so completely.”

“Match-makin’,” replied her aunt, “is rather amusin’. I haven’t done any for a long time. I wonder what Con and your mother will say to me. I shall wake up o’ nights.”

“First catch your Hubert, Auntie.”

“I was always fond of Hubert; he has the family face—you haven’t, Dinny, I don’t know where you get your colourin’—and he looks so well on a horse. Where does he get his breeches?”

“I don’t believe he’s had a new pair since the war, Auntie.”

“And he wears nice long waistcoats. Those short waistcoats straight across are so abbreviatin’. I shall send him out with Jean to see the rock borders. There’s nothin’ like portulaca for bringin’ people together. Ah! There’s Boswell-and-Johnson—I must catch him.”

Hubert arrived soon after noon, and almost the first thing he said was:

“I’ve changed my mind about having my diary published, Dinny. Exhibiting one’s sore finger is too revolting.”

Thankful that as yet she had taken no steps, she answered meekly:

“Very well, dear.”

“I’ve been thinking: If they’re not going to employ me here, I might get attached to a Soudan regiment; or I believe they’re short of men for the Indian Police. I shall be jolly glad to get out of the country again. Who’s here?”

“Only Uncle Lawrence, Aunt Em, and Aunt Wilmet. The Rector and his family are coming to lunch—the Tasburghs, they’re distant cousins.”

“Oh!” said Hubert, glumly.

She watched the advent of the Tasburghs almost maliciously. Hubert and young Tasburgh at once discovered mutual service in Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf. They were talking about it when Hubert became conscious of Jean. Dinny saw him give her a long look, enquiring and detached, as of a man watching a new kind of bird; saw him avert his eyes, speak and laugh, then gaze back at her.

Her aunt’s voice said: “Hubert looks thin.”

The Rector spread his hands, as if to draw attention to his present courtly bulk. “Dear Lady, at his age I was thinnah.”

“So was I,” said Lady Mont; “thin as you, Dinny.”

“We gathah unearned increment, ah-ha! Look at Jean—lithe is the word; in forty years—but perhaps the young of today will nevah grow fat. They do slimming—ah-ha!”

At lunch the Rector faced Sir Lawrence across the shortened table, and the two elder ladies sat one on each side of him. Alan faced Hubert and Dinny faced Jean.

“For what we are about to receive the Lord make us truly thankful.”

“Rum thing—grace!” said young Tasburgh in Dinny’s ear. “Benediction on murder, um?”

“There’ll be hare,” said Dinny, “and I saw it killed. It cried.”

“I’d as soon eat dog as hare.”

Dinny gave him a grateful look.

“Will you and your sister come and see us at Condaford?”

“Give me a chance!”

“When do you go back to your ship?”

“I’ve got a month.”

“I suppose you are devoted to your profession?”

“Yes,” he said, simply. “It’s bred in the bone, we’ve always had a sailor in the family.”

“And we’ve always had a soldier.”

“Your brother’s deathly keen. I’m awfully glad to have met him.”

“No, Blore,” said Dinny to the butler, “cold partridge, please. Mr. Tasburgh too will eat something cold.”

“Beef, Sir; lamb, partridge.”

“Partridge, thank you.”

“I’ve seen a hare wash its ears,” added Dinny.

“When you look like that,” said young Tasburgh, “I simply—”

“Like what?”

“As if you weren’t there, you know.”

“Thank you.”

“Dinny,” said Sir Lawrence, “who was it said the world was an oyster? I say it’s a clam. What’s your view?”

“I don’t know the clam, Uncle Lawrence.”

“You’re fortunate. That travesty of the self-respecting bivalve is the only tangible proof of American idealism. They’ve put it on a pedestal, and go so far as to eat it. When the Americans renounce the clam, they will have become realists and joined the League of Nations. We shall be dead.”

But Dinny was watching Hubert’s face. The brooding look was gone: his eyes seemed glued to Jean’s deep luring eyes. She uttered a sigh.

“Quite right,” said Sir Lawrence, “it will be a pity not to live to see the Americans abandon the clam, and embrace the League of Nations. For, after all,” he continued, pursing up his left eye, “it WAS founded by an American and is about the only sensible product of our time. It remains, however, the pet aversion of another American called Monroe who died in 1831, and is never alluded to without a scoff by people like ‘Snubby.’

“Yes,” said Dinny, startled, “it’s in Hubert’s diary; I read it out to Lord Saxenden. It was just then he went to sleep.”

“He would. But don’t forget, Dinny, that Snubby’s a deuced clever fellow, and knows his world to a T. It may be a world you wouldn’t be seen dead in, but it’s the world where ten million more-or-less-young men were recently seen dead. I wonder,” concluded Sir Lawrence, more thoughtfully, “when I have been so well fed at my own table as these last days; something has come over your aunt.”

Organising after lunch a game of croquet between herself and Alan Tasburgh against his father and Aunt Wilmet, Dinny watched the departure of Jean and her brother towards the rock borders. They stretched from the sunken garden down to an old orchard, beyond which rose a swell of meadow-land.

‘THEY won’t stop at the portulaca,’ she thought.

Two games, indeed, were over before she saw them again coming from a different direction, deep in talk. ‘This,’ she thought, hitting the Rector’s ball with all her force, is about the quickest thing ever known.’

“God bless me!” murmured the smitten clergyman, and Aunt Wilmet, straight as a grenadier, uttered a loud: “Damn it, Dinny, you’re impossible!…”

Later, beside her brother in the open car, she was silent, making up her mind, as it were, to second place. Though what she had hoped for had come to pass, she was depressed. She had been first with Hubert until now. She needed all her philosophy watching the smile coming and going on his lips.