m with surprised delight
to note how perfectly he was at his ease. He could never have imagined
himself seated with four ladies at a table--three of them, moreover,
ladies of title--and doing it all so well.

For one thing, the ladies themselves had a morning manner, so to
speak, which differed widely from the impressions he had had of their
deportment the previous evening. They seemed now to be as simple and
fresh and natural as the unadorned frocks they wore. They listened with
an air of good-fellowship to him when he spoke; they smiled at the right
places; they acted as if they liked him, and were glad of his company.

The satisfied conviction that he was talking well, and behaving well,
accompanied him in his progress through the meal. His confession at the
outset of his great hunger, and of the sinister apprehensions which
had assailed him in his loitering walk about the place, proved a most
fortuitous beginning; after that, they were ready to regard everything
he said as amusing.

"Oh, when we're by ourselves," the kindly little old hostess explained
to him, "my daughter and I breakfast always at nine. That was our hour
yesterday morning, for example. But when my son is here, then it's
farewell to regularity. We put breakfast back till ten, then, as a kind
of compromise between our own early habits and his lack of any sort of
habits. Why we do it I couldn't say--because he never comes down in any
event. He sleeps so well at Hadlow--and you know in town he sleeps
very ill indeed--and so we don't dream of complaining. We're only too
glad--for his sake."

"And Balder," commented the sister, "he's as bad the other way. He
gets up at some unearthly hour, and has his tea and a sandwich from the
still-room, and goes off with his rod or his gun or the dogs, and we
never see him till luncheon."

"I've been on the point of asking so many times," Miss Madden
interposed--"is Balder a family name, or is it after the Viking in
Matthew Arnold's poem?"

"It was his father's choice," Lady Plowden made answer. "I think the
Viking explanation is the right one--it certainly isn't in either
family. I can't say that it attracted me much--at first, you know."

"Oh, but it fits him so splendidly," said Lady Cressage. "He looks the
part, as they say. I always thought it was the best of all the soldier
names--and you have only to look at him to see that he was predestined
for a soldier from his cradle."

"I wish the Sandhurst peo