e did not enter it for
quite five minutes. But Frieda detected a delicate situation, and said
that she and Helen had much better wait for Bruno down below, and
leave Margaret and Mrs. Munt to finish arranging the flowers. Helen
acquiesced. But, as if to prove that the situation was not delicate
really, she stopped in the doorway and said:

"Did you say the Mathesons' flat, Aunt Juley? How wonderful you are!
I never knew that the name of the woman who laced too tightly was
Matheson."

"Come, Helen," said her cousin.

"Go, Helen," said her aunt; and continued to Margaret almost in the same
breath: "Helen cannot deceive me. She does mind."

"Oh, hush!" breathed Margaret. "Frieda'll hear you, and she can be so
tiresome."

"She minds," persisted Mrs. Munt, moving thoughtfully about the room,
and pulling the dead chrysanthemums out of the vases. "I knew she'd
mind--and I'm sure a girl ought to! Such an experience! Such awful
coarse-grained people! I know more about them than you do, which you
forget, and if Charles had taken you that motor drive--well, you'd have
reached the house a perfect wreck. Oh, Margaret, you don't know what
you are in for! They're all bottled up against the drawing-room window.
There's Mrs. Wilcox--I've seen her. There's Paul. There's Evie, who is a
minx. There's Charles--I saw him to start with. And who would an elderly
man with a moustache and a copper-coloured face be?"

"Mr. Wilcox, possibly."

"I knew it. And there's Mr. Wilcox."

"It's a shame to call his face copper colour," complained Margaret. "He
has a remarkably good complexion for a man of his age."

Mrs. Munt, triumphant elsewhere, could afford to concede Mr. Wilcox
his complexion. She passed on from it to the plan of campaign that her
nieces should pursue in the future. Margaret tried to stop her.

"Helen did not take the news quite as I expected, but the Wilcox nerve
is dead in her really, so there's no need for plans."

"It's as well to be prepared."

"No--it's as well not to be prepared."

"Why?"

"Because--"

Her thought drew being from the obscure borderland. She could not
explain in so many words, but she felt that those who prepare for all
the emergencies of life beforehand may equip themselves at the
expense of joy. It is necessary to prepare for an examination, or
a dinner-party, or a possible fall in the price of stock: those who
attempt human relations must adopt another method, or fail. "Because I'd
sooner