ndage round her head, neck, and
shoulders!

She glanced at him. He wore his best black clothes. "You look very
well," said she, surprisingly. "That old-fashioned black necktie is
splendid."

So they went. James had the peculiar illusion that he was going to a
belated funeral, for except at funerals he had never in his life ridden
in a cab.

When he descended with his fragile charge in Mrs. Prockter's illuminated
porch, another cab was just ploughing up the gravel of the drive in
departure, and nearly the whole tribe of Swetnams was on the doorstep;
some had walked, and were boasting of speed. There were Sarah Swetnam,
her brother Ted, the lawyer, her brother Ronald, the borough surveyor,
her brother Adams, the bank cashier, and her sister Enid, aged
seventeen. This child was always called "Jos" by the family, because
they hated the name "Enid," which they considered to be "silly." Lilian,
the newly-affianced one, was not in the crowd.

"Where's Lilian?" Helen asked, abruptly.

"Oh, she came earlier with the powerful Andrew," replied the youthful
and rather jealous Jos. "She isn't an ordinary girl now."

Sarah rapidly introduced her brothers and sisters to James. They were
all very respectful and agreeable; and Adams Swetnam pressed his hand
quite sympathetically, and Jos's frank smile was delicious. What
surprised him was that nobody seemed surprised at his being there. None
of the girls wore hats, he noticed, and he also noticed that the three
men (all about thirty in years) wore silk hats, white mufflers, and blue
overcoats.

A servant--a sort of special edition of James's Georgiana--appeared, and
robbed everybody of every garment that would yield easily to pulling.
And then those lovely creatures stood revealed. Yes, Sarah herself was
lovely under the rosy shades. The young men were elegantly slim, and
looked very much alike, except that Adams had a beard--a feeble beard,
but a beard. It is true that in their exact correctness they might have
been mistaken for toast-masters, or, with the slight addition of silver
neck-chains, for high officials in a costly restaurant. But
great-stepuncle James could never have been mistaken for anything but a
chip of the early nineteenth century flicked by the hammer of Fate into
the twentieth. His wide black necktie was the secret envy of the Swetnam
boys.

The Swetnam boys had the air of doing now what they did every night of
their lives. With facile ease, they led the w