"Grizel, please! Wait until afterwards. It's a young girl I am
training. She belongs to the Y.W.C.A."

Grizel's stare changed to a smile.

"I don't object, dear. I really don't. So long as she's pleased, I
assure you I won't let it make _any_ difference!"

"But that's just what I want it to do! Do please be sensible until
dinner is over, and for mercy's sake don't talk about flirts. She'll be
so shocked."

"Then she'll be the first Y.W. I've ever met who _was_. And I don't
believe she will, neither. There's a tilt to her cap--"

The door opened to admit the Y.W., bearing in her hands the fish, and on
her face that expression of concentrated vacuity which denotes acute
curiosity. Every householder has suffered such moments, and knows by
experience the painful pause which ensues before one of the diners
bursts vivaciously into impersonalities, but to-day there was no pause.
Grizel was too nimble-witted to permit such discomfiture. There was not
the slightest break in the continuity of her speech, her words flowed on
in a smooth unbroken stream.

"--The which I take to typify a certain temperamental tendency towards
the ornate, coupled with a desire to please, and be appreciated by those
whom Providence has appointed lords among us, against which tendency all
the restrictions of that admirable society--"

"Grizel! Idiot! Eat your fish. You talk too much!"

Martin had burst into a roar of laughter, in which Katrine perforce was
obliged to join. The Y.W. marched stolidly round the table. She was by
no means so dense as she appeared, was perfectly aware that the visitor
had been reproved in her absence, and suspected a personal application
in the long-winded speech. She disappeared in search of sauce, and to
report the progress of events to the eager cook.

"I'll make a compact with you," whispered Grizel eagerly. "I'll talk
like a tract to the end of my stay, if you can induce her _not_ to puff
down my back! Principles I respect, but draughts I abhor. Just make it
perfectly clear!" ...

The Y.W. returned, and puffed vigorously the while she handed the sauce,
whereat Katrine suffered a moment of acute suspense, but Grizel only
wriggled her white shoulders, and remarked sweetly:

"Chill, isn't it, for the time of year!"

Katrine hastily turned the conversation.

"Grizel, did you know that Martin's last book is already in its third
edition?"

"No. Is it? How very good."

The words we