ace fell. He made no attempt to
enter the car.

"Barbara gone away?"

I burst out laughing. His disappointment at not being welcomed by
Barbara at Northlands was so genuine and so childishly unconcealed.

"She'll be back in time for lunch. She had to run up to town on
business. She sent you her love and Susie will do the honours."

His face brightened. "That's all right. But you gave me a shock.
Northlands without Barbara--" He shook his head.

We drove off. The Chinese Puffhard excelled herself, and though she
choked asthmatically did not really stop once until we were half way up
the drive, when I abandoned her to the gardeners, who later on harnessed
the donkey to her and pulled her into the motor-house. We dismounted,
however, in the drive. A tiny figure in a blue smock came scuttling over
the sloping lawn. The next thing I saw was the small blue patch
somewhere in the upland region of Jaffery's beard. Then boomed forth
from him idiotic exclamations which are not worth chronicling,
accompanied by a duet of bass and treble laughter. Then he set her
astride of his bull neck and pitched his soft felt hat to Adrian to
hold.

"Hang on to my hair. It won't hurt," he commanded.

She obeyed literally, clawing two handfuls of his thick reddish shock in
her tiny grasp, and Jaffery lumbered along like an elephant with a robin
on his head, unconscious of her weight. We mounted to the terrace in
front of the house and having established my guests in easy chairs, I
went indoors to order such drink as would be refreshing on a sultry
August noon. When I returned I found Jaffery, with Susan on his knee,
questioning Adrian, after the manner of a primitive savage, on the
subject of "The Diamond Gate," and Adrian, delighted at the opportunity,
dazzling our simple-minded friend with publisher's statistics.

"And you're writing another? Deep down in another?" asked Jaffery. "Do
you know, Susie, Uncle Adrian has just got to take a pen and jab it into
a piece of paper, and--tchick!--up comes a golden sovereign every time
he does it."

Susan turned her serene gaze on Adrian. "Do it now," she commanded.

"I haven't got a pen," said he.

"I'll fetch you one from Daddy's study," she said, sliding from
Jaffery's knee.

Both Jaffery and Adrian looked scared. I, who was not the father of a
feminine thing of seven years old for nothing, interposed, I think,
rather tactfully.

"Uncle Adrian can only do it with a great gold pen, and