teps homeward, passing on his way
the bandstand with its surrounding acreage of tables. It was now nearly
one o'clock, and luncheon parties were beginning to assemble under the
awnings of the restaurant. Lighter refreshments, in the shape of
sausages and potato salads, were being carried out by scurrying waiters
to the drinkers of lager beer at the small tables. A park orchestra, in
brilliant trappings, had taken the place of the military band. As Yeovil
passed the musicians launched out into the tune which the doctor had
truly predicted he would hear to repletion before he had been many days
in London; the "National Anthem of the fait accompli."

CHAPTER V: L'ART D'ETRE COUSINE

Joan Mardle had reached forty in the leisurely untroubled fashion of a
woman who intends to be comely and attractive at fifty. She cultivated a
jovial, almost joyous manner, with a top-dressing of hearty good will and
good nature which disarmed strangers and recent acquaintances; on getting
to know her better they hastily re-armed themselves. Some one had once
aptly described her as a hedgehog with the protective mimicry of a
puffball. If there was an awkward remark to be made at an inconvenient
moment before undesired listeners, Joan invariably made it, and when the
occasion did not present itself she was usually capable of creating it.
She was not without a certain popularity, the sort of popularity that a
dashing highwayman sometimes achieved among those who were not in the
habit of travelling on his particular highway. A great-aunt on her
mother's side of the family had married so often that Joan imagined
herself justified in claiming cousin-ship with a large circle of
disconnected houses, and treating them all on a relationship footing,
which theoretical kinship enabled her to exact luncheons and other
accommodations under the plea of keeping the lamp of family life aglow.

"I felt I simply had to come to-day," she chuckled at Yeovil; "I was just
dying to see the returned traveller. Of course, I know perfectly well
that neither of you want me, when you haven't seen each other for so long
and must have heaps and heaps to say to one another, but I thought I
would risk the odium of being the third person on an occasion when two
are company and three are a nuisance. Wasn't it brave of me?"

She spoke in full knowledge of the fact that the luncheon party would not
in any case have been restricted to Yeovil and his wife, havi