s
which he had brought with him from Little-Sudbury-in-the-Wold in the days
of his novitiate. Jill was well dressed, but, in the stirring epoch of the
Suffrage disturbances, the policeman had been kicked on the shins and even
bitten by ladies of an equally elegant exterior. Hearts, the policeman
knew, just as pure and fair may beat in Belgrave Square as in the lowlier
air of Seven Dials, but you have to pinch them just the same when they
disturb the peace. His gaze, as it fell upon Jill, red-handed as it were
with the stick still in her grasp, was stern.

"Your name, please, and address, miss?" he said.

A girl in blue with a big hat had come up, and was standing staring
open-mouthed at the group. At the sight of her Bill the parrot uttered
a shriek of welcome. Nelly Bryant had returned, and everything would
now be all right again.

"Mariner," said Jill, pale and bright-eyed. "I live at Number
Twenty-two, Ovingdon Square."

"And yours, sir?"

"Mine? Oh, ah, yes. I see what you mean. Rooke, you know. F. L. Rooke.
I live at the Albany and all that sort of thing."

The policeman made an entry in his note-book.

"Officer," cried Jill, "this man was trying to kill that parrot and I
stopped him...."

"Can't help that, miss. You 'adn't no right to hit a man with a stick.
You'll 'ave to come along."

"But, I say, you know!" Freddie was appalled. This sort of thing had
happened to him before, but only on Boat-Race Night at the Empire,
where it was expected of a chappie. "I mean to say!"

"And you, too, sir. You're both in it."

"But...."

"Oh, come along, Freddie," said Jill quietly. "It's perfectly absurd,
but it's no use making a fuss."

"That," said the policeman cordially, "is the right spirit!"

III

Lady Underhill paused for breath. She had been talking long and
vehemently. She and Derek were sitting in Freddie Rooke's apartment at
the Albany, and the subject of her monologue was Jill. Derek had been
expecting the attack, and had wondered why it had not come before. All
through supper on the previous night, even after the discovery that
Jill was supping at a near-by table with a man who was a stranger to
her son, Lady Underhill had preserved a grim reticence with regard to
her future daughter-in-law. But to-day she had spoken her mind with
all the energy which comes of suppression. She had relieved herself
with a flow of words of all the pent-up hostility that had been
growing within her since that f