m not
superstitious, myself." He may not have been, but certainly, Lucy told
herself, he wasn't very good at little jokes. Lancelot, on the other
hand, was very good at them. "Twelve and a half!" he said, lifting one
eyebrow, just like his father. "Why, I'm twelve and a half myself!"
Then he propounded his little joke. "I say, Mamma, on the twelve and
halfth of January--because the evening is exactly half the day--twelve
and a half people have a dinner-party, and one of them _is_ twelve and
a half. Isn't that neat?"

Lucy encouraged her beloved. "It's very neat indeed," she said, and
her grey eyes glowed, or seemed to glow.

"It's what we call an omen at school," said Lancelot. "It means--oh,
well, it means lots of things, like you're bound to have it, and it's
bound to be a frightful success, or an utter failure, or something of
that kind." He thought about it. Developments crowded upon him. "I
say, Mamma--" all this was at breakfast, Macartney shrouding himself
in the _Morning Post_:

"Yes, Lancelot?"

"It would be awfully good, awfully ingenious and all that, if one of
the people was _twice_ twelve and a half."

She agreed. "Yes, I should like that. Very likely one of them is."

Lancelot looked extremely serious. "Not Mr. Urquhart?" he said.

"No," said Lucy, "I am sure Mr. Urquhart is older than that. But
there's Margery Dacre. She might do."

Lancelot had his own ideas as to whether women counted or not, in
omens, but was too polite to express them.

"Is she twenty-five, do you think? She's rather thin." Lucy exploded,
and had to kiss the unconscious humourist. "Do you think we grow
fatter as we grow older? Then you must think me immense, because I'm
much more than twenty-five," she said.

Here was a vital matter. It is impossible to do justice to Lancelot's
seriousness, on the edge of truth. "How much more are you, really?"
he asked her, trembling for the answer.

She looked heavenly pretty, with her drawn-back head and merry eyes.
She was a dark-haired woman with a tender smile; but her eyes were
her strong feature--of an intensely blue-grey iris, ringed with
black. Poising to tantalise him, adoring the fun of it, suddenly she
melted, leaned until her cheek touched his, and whispered the dreadful
truth--"_Thirty-one_."

I wish I could do justice to his struggle, politeness tussling with
pity for a fall, but tripping it up, and rising to the proper
lightness of touch. "Are you really thirty-one? Oh