y;
"'ducky little girls', you called them, and 'little pets'."

"That's all very well," said Hugh; "little pets are very nice in their
place, and no one appreciates them better than faithfully yours, for an
hour or so. But when you get 'em for breakfast and lunch and dinner. And
they even insist upon trifling with the holies of your smoking times,
trying to light up cigarettes themselves, and jabbering all the time,
why then you seize on a civil offer to risk your neck in a racing car as
a drowning man would catch at a torpedo if he found it floating handy."

"You seem to have returned heart-whole, at all events," said Kate; "and
I've had my suspicions of you."

"No," said Hugh, fanning himself composedly with a newspaper, "my day is
not yet, though as I've told you before I'm like the fellow in the comic
opera, there is that within me that tells me that when my time _does_
come the convulsion will be tremendous! When I love, it will be with
the accumulated fervour of sixty-six years! But I have an ideal--a
semi-transparent Being filled with an inorganic fruit jelly--and I have
never yet seen the woman who approaches within reasonable distance of
it. All--all opaque--opaque--opaque."

Kate laughed. "Then I'm afraid you don't feel much better for the
change," she said.

They had both hoped that a week's "junketing" with lively companions
might bring back the pen's good hour.

"Better!" he groaned, "why the day you let that Bibby woman loose on me
I was a flowing river compared to my mood to-day."

At that a recollection evidently came over Kate, some memory that the
unexpected arrival had driven away, for she froze visibly.

"I will go and make you a lemon-squash," she said coldly; "you are
possibly thirsty."

"Thirsty!" said Hugh, "my outward and visible dust is nothing to what
I've swallowed! Make me six lemon-squashes. But what's the matter, Kit?"

She made no answer, merely turned one severe glance on him and went off
to the pantry.

"Do tell me, Kate," he said, after he had lowered the large jugful she
brought him, and still she had made no further remark. "Nothing's
happened to the bike, has it? You've not smashed your precious nose? No,
it seems intact. Has the low-spirited Ellen given notice? Has Octavius
been charging more than elevenpence for his bacon?"

But Kate preserved a stony silence; she even picked up her book again
and affected to read. He drew the volume out of her hands.

"I pray thee