our mother was most awfully afraid of leaving us
alone for a minute, you know--as though she thought I were a suspicious
character, don't you know? Something of that sort. So, of course, I
thought she didn't like me. Do you see? Tremendously cheeky of me to
talk in this way, isn't it?"

"Do you know? It is, rather." Clare was more inclined to laugh than
before, but she only smiled in the dark.

"Well, it would be, of course, if I didn't happen to be so painfully
respectable."

"Painfully respectable! What an expression!" This time, Clare laughed
aloud.

"Yes. That's just it. Well, I couldn't exactly tell Mrs. Bowring that,
could I? Besides, one isn't vain of being respectable. I couldn't say,
Please, Mrs. Bowring, my father is Mr. Smith, and my mother was a Miss
Brown, of very good family, and we've got five hundred a year in
Consols, and we're not in trade, and I've been to a good school, and am
not at all dangerous. It would have sounded so--so uncalled for, don't
you know? Wouldn't it?"

"Very. But now that you've explained it to me, I suppose I may tell my
mother, mayn't I? Let me see. Your father is Mr. Smith, and your mother
was a Miss Brown--"

"Oh, please--no!" interrupted Johnstone. "I didn't mean it so very
literally. But it is just about that sort of thing--just like anybody
else. Only about our not being in trade, I'm not so sure of that. My
father is a brewer. Brewing is not a profession, so I suppose it must be
a trade, isn't it?"

"You might call it a manufacture," suggested Clare.

"Yes. It sounds better. But that isn't the question, you know. You'll
see my people when they come, and then you'll understand what I
mean--they really are tremendously respectable."

"Of course!" assented the young girl. "Like the party you came with on
the yacht. That kind of people."

"Oh dear no!" exclaimed Johnstone. "Not at all those kind of people.
They wouldn't like it at all, if you said so."

"Ah! indeed!" Clare was inclined to laugh again.

"The party I came with belong rather to a gay set. Awfully nice, you
know," he hastened to add, "and quite the people one knows at home. But
my father and mother--oh no! they are quite different--the difference
between whist and baccarat, you know, if you understand that sort of
thing--old port and brandy and soda--both very good in their way, but
quite different."

"I should think so."

"Then--" Johnstone hesitated again. "Then, Miss Bowring--you don't think