always changing, Lady Lane believed that all men-servants drank or stole
the cigars. . . . In the last resort, these country-bred girls were so
difficult to teach. . . .

Down the passage came the sound of emptying taps and a voice singing
cheerfully in the bath.

"Don't stay there all night, Geoff!" Eric cried, banging on the door.
"It's a quarter to eight now."

It was five minutes to eight before the bathroom, sloppy and filled with
steam, was surrendered to him. No man could have a hot bath and dress in
five minutes; he was particularly anxious to appear at his best for the
meeting with Agnes. . . .

And the water was tepid. . . .

2

"I have been apologizing for you," said Lady Lane pointedly, as Eric
hurried late and ill-humoured into the drawing-room.

He had ready at hand a caustic little speech about inadequate hot-water
supply and insufficient bathrooms, but it was intended for domestic
consumption and, after one scowl at Geoff, he laid it aside. Family
altercations, like family jokes, should be reserved for the family,
though no one else emulated his moderation. He wondered whether the
servants grew as weary as he did of the story about the cross-country
journey from Oxford to Winchester; it was dragged up at his expense
whenever any one missed a train--and trains were missed weekly.
Servants, of course, could always leave; they always did. Perhaps they
made bets which would hear the Oxford-to-Winchester story most often in
three months; perhaps they met in sullen conspiracy and pledged
themselves to decamp in a body the next time any one heard it. . . .

That tepid bath had chilled his enjoyment of everything. . . .

"I'm sorry to be late," he murmured, stiffly impenitent.

Agnes Waring was in the foreground, talking to his father; he shook
hands shyly and squeezed past her to Nares, the apologetic, ineffectual
vicar, and from Nares to Mrs. Waring, who was talking to a young officer
whom she had brought over with her party. Colonel Waring stood by the
fire, retailing safe newspaper opinions on the war and representing to
Eric's theatre-trained eyes, with their passion for "types," almost too
perfect a picture of the younger brother who had passed from twenty
years in a cavalry regiment to half-pay retirement and a certain
military pretentiousness of daily life. There was no one else. Had their
lives depended on it, Lashmar could not yield another man or woman.

"Entertaining here always remin