d Shepherds
in the shapes of beautifully gowned, handsome, placid, somewhat dull,
the Honourable Mary Bingham, pronounced Beam, her friend Diana Lytham,
and the rotund personalities of Sir Timothy and Lady Sarah Ann
Gruntham, drew up behind the menacing hand of a policeman alongside a
limousine containing representatives of Shepherds and the Savoy in the
shapes of two rotund-to-be daughters and one thin son of the race of
Gruntham, and the Honourable Mary's faded mother, who were all racing
home in the search of cool baths, or cooler drinks, or a few moments'
repose in a darkened room in which to forget the stifling half hours of
a series of social functions, given in honour of Cairo's most festive
week of the season, before starting on a dressing campaign against the
depredations made upon the skin by flies, heat, sand, wind, and
cosmetics.

The past middle-aged Sir Timothy of the latest birthday honours,
partner in life of Lady Gruntham, and therefore part possessor of the
Gruntham family, was whole owner of an army of chimney stacks which,
morning, noon, and night, belched thick oily smoke across one of
England's Northern counties in the process of manufacturing a
substitute for something; also he owned a banking account almost as big
as his honest old heart.

_La famille_ Gruntham were breaking their first wide-eyed, open-mouthed
_tour de monde_ in Cairo, having selected their hotel from an
advertisement in the A.B.C.

The Honourable Mary's nondescript mother sat patiently waiting the
decisive moment which would see her _en route_ once more to tea in her
bedroom and the last chapter of a Hichens novel, as she had patiently
awaited decisive moments for years, having uncomplainingly allowed the
reins which controlled the large estate, and large fortune, to slip
into the large, capable hands of her daughter, just as she had also
either as uncomplainingly criss-crossed the world in the wake of her
daughter's unaristocratically large footsteps, or submissively remained
at home for the hunting, in which field the Honourable Mary excelled.

Diana Lytham, spinster, through no want of trying to remedy the defect,
expert at bridge, razor-edged of tongue, but still youthful enough to
allow the lid of Pandora's casket to lift on occasions, also to be
described by those who feared the razor-edge as petulant instead of
peevish, and cendree instead of sandy, passed the tedious moments of
waiting in a running commentary upon t