d amusingly and made her
visitor talk amusingly too. At the same time she cut the
bread-and-butter with a masterly skill and produced red pepper and sliced
lemon, where so many women would merely have produced reasons and regrets
for not having any. Cushat-Prinkly found that he was enjoying an
excellent tea without having to answer as many questions about it as a
Minister for Agriculture might be called on to reply to during an
outbreak of cattle plague.

"And now tell me why you have come to see me," said Rhoda suddenly. "You
arouse not merely my curiosity but my business instincts. I hope you've
come about hats. I heard that you had come into a legacy the other day,
and, of course, it struck me that it would be a beautiful and desirable
thing for you to celebrate the event by buying brilliantly expensive hats
for all your sisters. They may not have said anything about it, but I
feel sure the same idea has occurred to them. Of course, with Goodwood
on us, I am rather rushed just now, but in my business we're accustomed
to that; we live in a series of rushes--like the infant Moses."

"I didn't come about hats," said her visitor. "In fact, I don't think I
really came about anything. I was passing and I just thought I'd look in
and see you. Since I've been sitting talking to you, however, rather
important idea has occurred to me. If you'll forget Goodwood for a
moment and listen to me, I'll tell you what it is."

Some forty minutes later James Cushat-Prinkly returned to the bosom of
his family, bearing an important piece of news.

"I'm engaged to be married," he announced.

A rapturous outbreak of congratulation and self-applause broke out.

"Ah, we knew! We saw it coming! We foretold it weeks ago!"

"I'll bet you didn't," said Cushat-Prinkly. "If any one had told me at
lunch-time to-day that I was going to ask Rhoda Ellam to marry me and
that she was going to accept me I would have laughed at the idea."

The romantic suddenness of the affair in some measure compensated James's
women-folk for the ruthless negation of all their patient effort and
skilled diplomacy. It was rather trying to have to deflect their
enthusiasm at a moment's notice from Joan Sebastable to Rhoda Ellam; but,
after all, it was James's wife who was in question, and his tastes had
some claim to be considered.

On a September afternoon of the same year, after the honeymoon in Minorca
had ended, Cushat-Prinkly came into the drawi