with brown-red faces
and hard straw hats, short skirts, and tremendous voices; forerunners,
in fact, of a type now almost universal. They played croquet and
lawn-tennis, were prominent members of the Archery Club, and hunted when
their fathers would let them. They were terrible Dianas to Jeremy. He
had met one of them once at a Children's Dance, and she had whirled him
around until, with a terrified scream, he broke, howling, from her arms,
and hid himself in the large bosom of the Jampot. He was always ashamed
of this memory, and he could never see them without blushing; but,
to-day, he seemed less afraid of them, and actually, when he passed
them, touched his hat and looked them in the face. They all smiled and
nodded to him, and when they had gone he was so deeply astonished at
this adventure that he had to stop and consider himself. If the Craggs
were nothing to him, what might he not face?

"Come here, Hamlet. How dare you?" he ordered in so sharp and military
a voice that Hamlet, who had merely cast a most innocent glance at a
disdainful and conceited white poodle, looked up at his master with
surprise.

Nevertheless, his new-found hardihood received, in the very midst of his
self-congratulation, its severest test. He stumbled into the very path
of the Dean's wife.

Mrs. Dean could never have seemed to anyone a large woman, but to Jeremy
she had always been a terror. She was thick and hard, like a wall, and
wore the kind of silken clothes, that rustled--like the whispering of a
whole meeting of frightened clergymen's wives--as she moved. She had a
hard, condemnatory voice, and she spoke as though she were addressing an
assembly; but, worst of all, she had black, beetling eyebrows, and these
frightened Jeremy into fits. He did not, of course, know that the poor
lady suffered continually from nervous headaches. He suddenly heard that
voice in his ear: "Good morning, Jeremy, and where are you off to so
early?" Mrs. Dean was never so awful as when she was jolly, and Jeremy,
caught up by the eyebrows as though they had been hooks and hung thus in
mid-air for all the street to laugh at, nearly lost his command of his
natural tongue. He found his voice just in time:

"To Ponting's," he said.

"All alone? Ah, no, I see you have your little dog. Nice little dog. And
how's your mother?"

"She's quite well, thank you."

"That's right--that's right. We haven't seen you lately. You must come
up to tea with your siste