t. It appears that one of
these get-rich-quick munition men offered him double his wages to leave
me, and Derbyshire couldn't resist it. He came to me with tears in his
eyes and told me that he had to make the sacrifice owing to the
increased cost of living. He has a family, you know. He said that the
comic atmosphere of his new place might bring on neuritis, but he must
educate his three boys. Really, there is a great deal of unsung heroism
in the world, isn't there? In the meantime, I am trying to get
accustomed to a Swiss, who's probably a German spy and who will set up
a wireless installation on the roof." Then she dropped her baited hook.
"You have a large house party, I suppose."

"Yes," said Mrs. Hosack, swinging her foot to keep the flies away. The
wind was off the land.

"Primrose is so depressed if the house isn't full. And so the d'Oylys
are here,--Nina more Junoesque than ever and really quite like an
Amazon in bathing clothes; Enid Ouchterlony, a little bitter, I'm
afraid, at not being engaged to any one yet,--men are horribly scared
of an intelligent girl and, after all, they don't marry for
intelligence, do they?--Harry Oldershaw, Frank Milwood and Courtney
Millet, all nice boys, and I almost forgot to add, Joan Gray, that
charming girl. My good man is following at her heels like a bob-tailed
sheep dog. Poor old dear! He's arrived at that pathetic period of a
man's life when almost any really blond girl still in her teens
switches him into a second state of adolescence and makes him a most
ridiculous object--what the novelists call the 'Forty-nine feeling,' I
believe."

Bennett brought the lemonade and hurried away before his memory could
be put to a further strain. "Tell me about Joan Gray," said Mrs.
Jekyll, letting out her line. "There's probably no truth in it, but I
hear that she and Martin have agreed to differ. How quickly these
romantic love matches burn themselves out. I always say that a marriage
made in Heaven breaks up far sooner than one made on earth. It has so
much farther to fall. Whose fault is it, hers or his?"

Mrs. Hosack bent forward and endeavored to lower her voice. She was a
kind-hearted woman who delighted to see every one happy and normal.
"I'm very worried about those two, my dear," she answered. "There are
all sorts of stories afloat,--one to the effect that Martin has gone
off with a chorus girl, another that Joan only married him to get away
from her grandparents and a t