y waters, Mrs. Mosscrop-Smythe "dripped with the oil of
forbearance." Mr. Cordal ate noisily, Miss Sikkum simpered and Mrs.
Craske-Morton strove to appear a real hostess entertaining real guests
without the damning prefix "paying."

The remaining guests, there were usually round about twenty-five,
looked as they felt they ought to look, and never failed to show a
befitting reverence for Miss Wangle's ecclesiastical relic; for it was
Miss Wangle who issued the social birth certificates at Galvin House.

That evening Patricia was silent. Mr. Bolton endeavoured to draw her
out, but failed. As a rule she was the first to laugh at his jokes in
order "to encourage the poor little man," as she expressed it; "for a
man who is fat and bald and a bachelor and thinks he's a humorist wants
all the pity that the world can lavish upon him."

Patricia glanced round the table, from Miss Wangle, lean as a winter
wolf, to Mrs. Mosscrop-Smythe, fair, chubby and faded, and on to Mr.
Cordal, lantern-jawed and ravenous. "Were they not all lonely--the
left of God?" Patricia asked herself; and yet two of these solitary
souls had dared to pity her, Patricia Brent. At least she had
something they did not possess--youth.

The more she thought of the words that had drifted to her through the
half-closed door of the lounge, the more humiliating they appeared.
Her day had been particularly trying and she was tired. She was in a
mood to see a cyclone in a zephyr, and in a ripple a gigantic wave.
She looked about her once more. What a fate to be cast among such
people!

The table appointments seemed more than usually irritating that
evening. The base metal that peeped slyly through the silver of the
forks and spoons, the tapering knives, victims of much cleaning, with
their yellow handles, the salt-cellars, the mustard, browning with
three days' age (mustard was replenished on Sundays only), the anaemic
ferns in "artistic" pots, every defect seemed emphasized.

How she hated it; but most of all the many-shaped and multi-coloured
napkin-rings, at Galvin House known as "serviette-rings." Variety was
necessary to ensure each guest's personal interest in one particular
napkin. Did they ever get mixed? Patricia shuddered at the thought.
At the end of the week, a "serviette" had become a sort of gastronomic
diary. By Saturday evening (new "serviettes" were served out on Sunday
at luncheon) the square of grey-white fabric had many things re