h the most charming insouciance when he paused so portentously
at the very opening of his address. Her encouraging "yes" was rather in
the manner of a child waiting for the promised story.

Jervaise frowned and attempted the dramatic. "My sister, Brenda, has run
away," he said.

"When?"

"This evening at the end of the Cinderella. You knew we were giving a
dance?"

"But where to?"

"Oh! Precisely!" Jervaise said.

"But how extraordinary!" replied Miss Banks.

"Is she here?" asked Jervaise. He ought to have snapped that out
viciously, and I believe that was his intention. But Anne's exquisitely
innocent, absorbed gaze undid him; and his question had rather the sound
of an apology.

"No, certainly not! Why ever should she come here?" Anne said with
precisely the right nuance of surprise.

"Is your brother here?"

"No!"

It looks such an absurd little inexpressive word on paper, but Anne made a
song of it on two notes, combining astonishment with a sincerity that was
absolutely final. If, after that, Jervaise had dared to say, "Are you
sure?" I believe I should have kicked him.

How confounded he was, was shown by the change of attitude evident in his
next speech.

"It's horribly awkward," he said.

"Oh! horribly," Anne agreed, with a charming sympathy. "What are you going
to do?"

"You see, we can't find your brother, either," Jervaise tried tactfully.

"I don't quite see what that's got to do with Brenda," Anne remarked with
a sweet perplexity.

Apparently Jervaise did not wish to point the connection too abruptly. "We
wanted the car," he said; "and we couldn't find him anywhere."

"Oh! he's almost sure to have gone to sleep up in the woods," Anne
replied. "Arthur's like that, you know. He sort of got the habit in Canada
or somewhere. He often says that sometimes he simply can't bear to sleep
under a roof."

I had already begun to feel a liking for Anne's brother, and that speech
of hers settled me. I knew that "Arthur" was the right sort--or, at least,
my sort. I would have been willing, even then, to swap the whole Jervaise
family with the possible exception of Brenda, for this as yet unknown
Arthur Banks.

Jervaise's diplomacy was beginning to run very thin.

"You don't think it conceivable that Brenda..." he began gloomily.

"That Brenda what?"

"I was going to say..."

"Yes?" She leaned a little forward with an air of expectancy that
disguised her definite refusal to end his sentenc