young people will do too much!" Sir Joseph remarked solemnly.
Then turning to his hostess he added: "It was the same at the time of
the bicycle craze in the early nineties,--but you would scarcely
remember that, my dear lady!"

"What!" ejaculated Miss Mallowcoid. "Edith not remember the bicycle
craze of the nineties! My dear Sir Joseph, what absurd rubbish!"

Miss Mallowcoid was beginning to make her sister feel what the doctors
call "febrile."

"You so frequently jump at wrong conclusions in your efforts to set the
world right, my dear Bella," she said with bitter precision. "Surely
one's life may be so full of other preoccupations that one can forget
even the most startling events."

"Oh, I see what you mean," said Miss Mallowcoid, speaking with her mouth
full of very dry short-bread, "I didn't know he meant it in that way."

Sir Joseph was about to exclaim that he did not, as a matter of fact,
mean it "in that way"; but realising the hyperbolic quality of his
intended compliment, he preferred to appear eager to swallow the end of
a chocolate _eclair_ rather than attempt to explain.

At this point Denis was observed to try and snatch back a piece of cake
that Leonetta had, in keeping with her customary tactics, previously
taken from his plate. In doing so, however, he struck the top of the
milk jug with his elbow, and the vessel toppled over and emptied itself
upon his own and Leonetta's clothes.

Mrs. Delarayne flushed a little in anger. At any other time she would
have laughed with the rest over such an incident, but in the
circumstances it was too intimately connected with the cause of her
anxiety to be passed over in silence.

"Leo, you really are a pest," she exclaimed. "You simply cannot leave
Denis alone one minute. Really, Denis, if you'll excuse my being
outspoken, I'm surprised at your encouraging the child!"

"What it is to be young and good-looking!" sighed Vanessa, casting a
sidelong glance at the young gentleman in question.

"All right, Peachy!" Leonetta snapped, vexed and almost outraged by her
mother's bald statement of the plain truth, "it's only an accident; you
needn't be so cross."

Mrs. Delarayne was on the point of administering a stinging lesson to
her flapper daughter,--a lesson which that young person would certainly
have remembered to the end of her days,--when, suddenly, Wilmott
appeared on the lawn in front of the marquee.

"Yes, Wilmott, what is it?" Mrs. Delarayne enquired