e thinking me
a perfect beast!" She ran to the door. "Barker! Barker!"

Barker appeared from nowhere.

"Yes, miss?"

"I'm so sorry I forgot to ask before. How are your chilblains?"

"A good deal better miss, thank you."

"Did you try the stuff I recommended?"

"Yes, miss. It did them a world of good."

"Splendid!"

Jill went back into the sitting-room.

"It's all right," she said reassuringly. "They're better."

She wandered restlessly about the room, looking at the photographs,
then sat down at the piano and touched the keys. The clock on the
mantelpiece chimed the half-hour. "I wish to goodness they would
arrive," she said.

"They'll be here pretty soon, I expect."

"It's rather awful," said Jill, "to think of Lady Underhill racing all
the way from Mentone to Paris and from Paris to Calais and from Calais
to Dover and from Dover to London simply to inspect me. You can't
wonder I'm nervous, Freddie."

The eye-glass dropped from Freddie's eye.

"Are _you_ nervous?" he asked, astonished.

"Of course I'm nervous. Wouldn't you be in my place?"

"Well, I should never have thought it."

"Why do you suppose I've been talking such a lot? Why do you imagine I
snapped your poor, innocent head off just now! I'm terrified inside,
terrified!"

"You don't look it, by Jove!"

"No, I'm trying to be a little warrior. That's what Uncle Chris always
used to call me. It started the day when he took me to have a tooth
out, when I was ten. 'Be a little warrior, Jill!' he kept saying. 'Be
a little warrior!' And I was." She looked at the clock. "But I shan't
be if they don't get here soon. The suspense is awful." She strummed
the keys. "Suppose she _doesn't_ like me, Freddie! You see how you've
scared me."

"I didn't say she wouldn't. I only said you'd got to watch out a bit."

"Something tells me she won't. My nerve is oozing out of me." Jill
shook her head impatiently. "It's all so vulgar! I thought this sort
of thing only happened in the comic papers and in music-hall songs.
Why, it's just like that song somebody used to sing." She laughed. "Do
you remember? I don't know how the verse went, but ...

John took me round to see his mother,
his mother,
his mother!
And when he'd introduced us to each other,
She sized up everything that I had on.
She put me through a cross-examination:
I fairly boiled with aggravation:
Then sh