and Garter is be told what the
Star and Garter is?"

"But I am willing to go and see," said Sheila.

"Then I must look after getting a brougham," said Lavender, rising.

"A brougham on such a day as this?" exclaimed Ingram. "Nonsense! Get
an open trap of some sort; and Sheila, just to please me, will put on
that very blue dress she used to wear in Borva, and the hat and the
white feather, if she has got them."

"Perhaps you would like me to put on a sealskin cap and a red
handkerchief instead of a collar," observed Lavender calmly.

"You may do as you please. Sheila and I are going to dine at the Star
and Garter."

"May I put on that blue dress?" said the girl, going up to her
husband.

"Yes, of course, if you like," said Lavender meekly, going off to
order the carriage, and wondering by what route he could drive those
two maniacs down to Richmond so that none of his friends should see
them.

When he came back again, bringing with him a landau which could be
shut up for the homeward journey at night, he had to confess that no
costume seemed to suit Sheila so well as the rough sailor-dress; and
he was so pleased with her appearance that he consented at once to let
Bras go with them in the carriage, on condition that Sheila should be
responsible for him. Indeed, after the first shiver of driving away
from the square was over, he forgot that there was much unusual about
the look of this odd pleasure-party. If you had told him eighteen
months before that on a bright day in May, just as people were going
home from the Park for luncheon, he would go for a drive in a
hired trap with one horse, his companions being a man with a brown
wide-awake, a girl dressed as though she were the owner of a yacht,
and an immense deerhound, and that in this fashion he would dare to
drive up to the Star and Garter and order dinner, he would have bet
five hundred to one that such a thing would never occur so long as he
preserved his senses. But somehow he did not mind much. He was very
much at home with those two people beside him; the day was bright and
fresh; the horse went a good pace; and once they were over Hammersmith
Bridge and out among fields and trees, the country looked exceedingly
pretty, and all the beauty of it was mirrored in Sheila's eyes.

"All can't quite make you out in that dress, Sheila," he said. "I am
not sure whether it is real and business-like or a theatrical costume.
I have seen girls on Ryde Pier with so