h me to-morrow at seven. Bring the
children, of course. And if Mr.--er--Ketley can come along, it will be
even more delightful."

Still again I didn't intend to be stumped by her ladyship, so I said
that I'd be charmed, without one second of hesitation, and Peter, with
an assumption of vast gravity, agreed to come along if he didn't have
to wear a stiff collar and a boiled shirt. And he continued to rag
Lady Allie in a manner which seemed to leave her a little bewildered.
But she didn't altogether dislike it, I could see, for Peter has the
power of getting away with that sort of thing.

_Tuesday the Eighth_

Lady Alicia's dinner is over and done with. I can't say that it was a
howling success. And I'm still very much in doubt as to its _raison
d'etre_, as the youthful society reporters express it. At first I
thought it might possibly be to flaunt my lost grandeur in my face.
And then I argued with myself that it might possibly be to exhibit
Sing Lo, the new Chink man-servant disinterred from one of the
Buckhorn laundries. And still later I suspected that it might be a
sort of demonstration of preparedness, like those carefully timed
naval parades on the part of one of the great powers disquieted by the
activities of a restive neighbor. And then came still another
suspicion that it might possibly be a move to precipitate the
impalpable, as it were, to put certain family relationships to the
touch, and make finally certain as to how things stood.

But that, audacious as I felt Lady Alicia to be, didn't quite hold
water. It didn't seem any more reasonable than my earlier theories. And
all I'm really certain of is that the dinner was badly cooked and badly
served, rather reminding me of a chow-house meal on the occasion of a
Celestial New Year. We all wore our every-day clothes (with Peter's
most carefully pressed and sponged by the intriguing Struthers) and the
Twins were put asleep up-stairs in their old nursery and Dinkie was
given a place at the table with two sofa-cushions to prop him up in his
armchair (and acted like a little barbarian) and Peter nearly broke his
neck to make himself as pleasant as possible, chattering like a magpie
and reminding me of a circus-band trying to make the crowd forget the
bareback rider who's just been carried out on a stretcher. But
Constraint was there, all the while, first in the form of Dinky-Dunk's
unoccupied chair, which remained that way until