r of the studio.

'I wish she'd come and see us, as the others do. Why doesn't she like us
more?'

It was a simple question, thrown out casually and without much
wondering; after all, every one cannot like everybody else.

But it was curious how Tommy grew abruptly red.

'How do you mean like us? I should think she does, doesn't she? Why--why
shouldn't she?'

Betty's eyes consideringly took him in. He seemed, from his stammer
grown aggressive, to feel an interest. Obviously he had been
moved--moved a good deal--by 'the way she stands, don't you know, and
her eyes when she's going to smile.'

'Well, you see,' Betty amended, 'she's too keen on her work, I expect,
to want to see much of anyone. I dare say that's all.'

Tommy was a little appeased.

'She always talks a lot to me when I meet her.'

Betty's doubting eyebrows became a mark of interrogation. She demurred,
not to the 'lot of talk,' but to the apportionment of it--the order, in
fact, of the personal pronouns. Tommy frowned stubbornly, holding to it,
and drank a glass of wine with a defiant regard over the brim. Betty,
looking at him with puzzled eyes, at last shook a despairing head.

'No, Tommy, I can't; I can't imagine it. If you don't put it the other
way round quickly, my brain will break with the effort.'

Tommy, between a frown and a reluctant laugh, lit a cigarette.

'Oh, don't rot.... And what's the odds, anyhow, as long as we're both
interested?'

'I'm glad she's interested,' Betty said, reflectively striking a match.
'Then, they're all interested, which is nice. Mrs. Venables and Mr.
Venables, and the baby Venables, (she loves us very much, did you know?
Only she doesn't really think we're up to much, because we're rotters
and we don't play hockey), and Miss Varley too. I'm glad we're so
interesting, Tommy--aren't you? And now we've had lunch. We'll go in a
boat next, I think. What a nice expensive lunch we've had! Let's pay for
it.'

Then they took a fishing-boat with a large triangular sail, and turned
and twisted about the bay, with erratic deviations of course and sudden
heeling and recoveries. Then they landed, and lay again on the beach to
dry in the afternoon sun, and played ducks and drakes, and composed
limericks and wrote them on the sand with pieces of shell till it was
time to go home.

But before this time Warren Venables had joined them. He had motored
over from Naples to find them and bring them back with him.

'Of co