n
that quasi-confidential tone of hers to Mr. Brumley.

"Of course they are mostly quite dreadfully Sweated," said Lady
Beach-Mandarin. "Especially in the confectionery----" She thought of her
position in time. "In the inferior class of confectioners'
establishments," she said and then hurried on to: "Of course when you
come to lunch,--Agatha Alimony. I'm most anxious for you and her to
meet."

"Is that _the_ Agatha Alimony?" asked Miss Sawbridge abruptly.

"The one and only," said Lady Beach-Mandarin, flashing a smile at her.
"And what a marvel she is! I do so want you to know her, Lady Harman.
She'd be a Revelation to you...."

Everything had gone wonderfully so far. "And now," said Lady
Beach-Mandarin, thrusting forward a face of almost exaggerated
motherliness and with an unwonted tenderness suffusing her voice, "show
me the Chicks."

There was a brief interrogative pause.

"Your Chicks," expanded Lady Beach-Mandarin, on the verge of crooning.
"Your _little_ Chicks."

"_Oh!_" cried Lady Harman understanding. "The children."

"Lucky woman!" cried Lady Beach-Mandarin. "Yes."

"One hasn't begun to be friends," she added, "until one has
seen--them...."

"So _true_," Mrs. Sawbridge confided to Mr. Brumley with a look that
almost languished....

"Certainly," said Mr. Brumley, "rather."

He was a little distraught because he had just seen Sir Isaac step
forward in a crouching attitude from beyond the edge of the lilacs, peer
at the tea-table with a serpent-like intentness and then dart back
convulsively into cover....

If Lady Beach-Mandarin saw him Mr. Brumley felt that anything might
happen.

Sec.4

Lady Beach-Mandarin always let herself go about children.

It would be unjust to the general richness of Lady Beach-Mandarin to say
that she excelled herself on this occasion. On all occasions Lady
Beach-Mandarin excelled herself. But never had Mr. Brumley noted quite
so vividly Lady Beach-Mandarin's habitual self-surpassingness. She
helped him, he felt, to understand better those stories of great waves
that sweep in from the ocean and swamp islands and devastate whole
littorals. She poured into the Harman nursery and filled every corner of
it. She rose to unprecedented heights therein. It seemed to him at
moments that they ought to make marks on the walls, like the marks one
sees on the houses in the lower valley of the Main to record the more
memorable floods. "The dears!" she cried: "the _little_ t