A TALL, stately, handsome woman, slow and quiet in movement, dressed in velvet and furs, came deliberately into the room. The magnificent, imposing Lady Kellynch had that quiet dignity and natural ease and distinction sometimes seen in the widow of a knight, but unknown amongst the old aristocracy. It was generally supposed, or, at all events, stated, that the late Sir Percy Kellynch had been knighted by mistake for somebody else; through a muddle owing to somebody’s deafness. The result was the same, since his demise left her with a handle to her name, but no one to turn it (to quote the mot of a well-known wit), and she looked, at the very least, like a peeress in her own right. Indeed, she was the incarnation of what the romantic lower middle classes imagine a great lady;—a dressmaker’s ideal of a duchess. She had the same high forehead, without much thought behind it, so noticeable in her son Percy, and the same clearly cut features; and it was true, as Bertha had said, that she firmly believed the whole of the world, of the slightest importance, consisted of her late husband, herself, her married son Percy, and her boy Clifford at school; the rest of the universe was merely an audience, or a background, for this unique family.

If anyone spoke of a European crisis that was interesting the general public, she would reply by saying what Percy thought about it; if a more frivolous subject (such as You Shut Up, or some other popular Revue) was mentioned, she would answer, reassuringly, that she knew Clifford had a picture post-card of one of the performers, implying thereby that it must be all right. She loved Bertha mildly, and with reservations, because Percy loved her, and because Bertha wished her to; but she really thought it would have been more suitable if Bertha had been a little more colourless, a little plainer, a little stupider and more ordinary; not that her attractions would ever cause any trouble to Percy, but because it seemed as if a son of hers ought to have a wife to throw him up more. Percy, however, had no idea that Bertha was anything but a good foil to him, intellectually—and, as I have said, he regarded her (or believed he regarded her) a good deal like a pet canary.

“Percy will soon be home, I suppose? To-day is not the day he goes to the Queen’s Hall, is it?” asked Lady Kellynch, who thought any hall was highly honoured by Percy’s presence, and very lucky to get it. She gave a graceful but rather unrecognising bow to Madeline, whom she never knew by sight. She really knew hardly anyone by sight except her sons; and this was the more odd as she had a particularly large circle of acquaintances, and made a point of accepting and returning every invitation she received, invariably being amongst those present at every possible form of entertainment, and punctiliously calling on people afterwards. She was always mounting staircases, going up in lifts, and driving about leaving cards, and was extremely hospitable and superlatively social. Bertha always wondered at her gregariousness, since one would fancy she could have got very little satisfaction in continual intercourse with a crowd of people whom she forgot the instant they were out of her sight. Lady Kellynch really knew people chiefly by their telephone numbers and their days, when they had any. She would say: “Mrs. So-and-so? Oh yes, six-three-seven-five Gerrard, at home on Sundays,” but could rarely recollect anything else about her. She was at once vague and precise, quite amiable, very sentimental and utterly heartless; except to her sons.

“No, Percy won’t be home till dinner-time. To-day he’s playing squash rackets.”

“That’s so like his father,” said Lady Kellynch admiringly. “He was always so fond of sports, and devoted to music. When I say sports, to be strictly accurate I don’t mean that he ever cared for rude, rough games like football or anything cruel like hunting or shooting, but he loved to look on at a game of cricket, and I’ve often been to Lord’s with him.” She sighed. “Dominoes! he was wild about dominoes! I assure you (dear Percy would remember), every evening after dinner he must have his game of dominoes, and sometimes even after lunch.”

“Dominoes, as you say, isn’t exactly a field sport,” sympathetically agreed Bertha.

“Quite so, dear. But, however, that was his favourite game. Then, did I say just now he was fond of music? He didn’t care for the kind that Percy likes, but he would rarely send a piano-organ away, and he even encouraged the German bands. How fond he was of books too—and reading, and that sort of thing! Percy gets his fondness for books from his father. Clifford too is fond of books.”

“He is indeed,” said Bertha; “he’s devoted to books. Last time I went to see him, when he was at home for the holidays, I found among his books a nice copy of ‘The New Arabian Nights.’ We hadn’t one in the house at the time, and I asked him to lend it to me.”

“Did you indeed?”

Lady Kellynch looked a shade surprised, as if it had been rather a liberty.

“Well,” said Bertha, laughing, and turning to Madeline, “what do you think he said? ‘Bertha, I’m awfully sorry, but I make it a rule never to lend books. I don’t approve of it—half the time they don’t come back, and in fact—oh, I don’t think it’s a good plan. I never do it.’ I took up the book and found written in it: ‘To Bertha, with love from Percy.’ I said: ‘So you don’t approve of lending books. Do you see this is my book?’ He looked at it and said solemnly: ‘Yes, so it is, but I can’t let you have it. I’m in the middle of it. Besides—oh! anyhow, I want it!’”

Madeline and Bertha both laughed, saying that Clifford was really magnificent for twelve years old.Lady Kellynch seemed astonished at their amusement. She only said: “Oh yes; I know Clifford’s most particular about his books.”

“And even about my books,” said Bertha.

“Quite so, dear. They say in his report that he’s getting so orderly. It’s a very good report this term—er—at least, very good on the whole.”

“Oh, do let me see it.”

“No, I don’t think I’ll show it you. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I’ll read you some extracts from it, if you like.” She said this as if it were an epic poem, and she was promising them a rare literary treat.

She took something out of her bag. “I know he doesn’t work very hard at school, but then the winter term is such a trying one; so cold for them to get up in the morning, poor little darlings!”

“Poor pets!” said Bertha.

Lady Kellynch took it out, while the others looked away discreetly, as she searched for suitable selections.

After a rather long pause she read aloud, a little pompously and with careful elocution:

“‘Doing fairly well in dictation, and becoming more accurate; in Latin moderate, scarcely up to the level of the form. …’”

“Is it in blank verse?” asked Bertha.“Oh no! … Of course he’s in a very high form for his age.” She then went on, after a longer pause: “‘Music and dancing: music, rather weak … dancing, a steady worker.’ That’s very good, isn’t it? … ‘Map-drawing: very slovenly.’” (She read this rather proudly.) “‘Conduct: lethargic and unsteady; but a fair speller.’ Excellent, isn’t it? Of course they’re frightfully severe at that school. … Oh yes, and there’s ‘Bible good, but deficient in general knowledge. Has a little ability, but rarely uses it. …’ It’s dreadfully difficult to please them, really! But I think it’s very satisfactory, don’t you?”

Realising that Lady Kellynch had only read aloud the very best and most brilliant extracts that she could find in the report—purple patches, as one may say—Bertha gathered that it could hardly have been worse. So she congratulated the mother warmly and cordially, and said how fond she was of Clifford.

“He will be home soon for the Easter holidays. You must let him come and stay with us.”

“It’s very kind of you, dear. Certainly he shall come, part of the time. I can’t bear to part with him—especially at first. Yes—at first I feel I never want him to leave me again! However, he enjoys himself so much here that I like to send him to you towards the end. He looks upon Bertha quite like a playmate,” she said to Madeline. Something about Madeline reminded her of someone she had met.

“I was at a dinner-party last night where I met a young man I saw here once, who took you in to dinner. He knows Percy—he was at Balliol with Percy—a Mr. Denison—Mr. Rupert Denison. He seemed inclined to be rather intellectual. He talked to me a great deal about something—I forget what; but I know it was some subject: something that Percy once had to pass an examination in. … I can’t remember what it was. I used to know his mother; Mrs. Denison—a charming woman! I’m afraid though she didn’t leave him very well off. I wonder how he manages to make two ends meet?”

“He manages all right; he makes them lap over, I should think. Who did he take to dinner?” Bertha asked this in Madeline’s interest.

“Oh, a girl I don’t like at all, whom I often see about. She’s always everywhere. I daresay you know her, a Miss Chivvey, a Miss Moona Chivvey—a good family, the Chivveys of Warwickshire. But she’s rather artistic-looking.” (Lady Kellynch lowered her voice as if she were saying something improper:) “She has untidy hair and green beads round her neck. I don’t like her—I don’t like her style at all.”“I’ve heard him mention her,” said Madeline.

“He talked to her a good deal in the evening, and he gave me the impression that he was giving her some sort of lesson—a lecture on architecture, or something. Well, dear, as Percy won’t be in yet, I think I’d better go. I have a round of visits to pay.”

“Percy is going to write to you. He wants you to go to a concert with him. He particularly wants you to go.”

Lady Kellynch brightened up. “Dear boy, does he? Of course I’ll go. Well, good-bye, darling.”

She swept from the room with the queenly grace and dignity that always seemed a little out of proportion to the occasion—one expected her to make a court curtsy, and go out backwards.

“My mother-in-law really believes it matters whether she calls on people or not,” said Bertha, in her low, even voice. “Isn’t it touching?”

Madeline seized her hand.

“Bertha, need I be frightened of Moona Chivvey? She’s a dangerous sort of girl; she takes interest in all the things Rupert does: pictures, and poetry and art needlework.”

“Does Rupert really do art needlework? What a universal genius he is!”“Don’t be absurd! I mean the things he understands. And she runs after him, rather. Need I be afraid?”

“No, you need not,” reassured Bertha. “I don’t think she sounds at all violent. There’s a ring.”

“Then I’ll go.”

Almost immediately afterwards the servant announced “Mr. Nigel Hillier.”

Nigel Hillier came in cheerily and gaily, brimming over with vitality and in the highest spirits. At present he was like sunshine and fresh air. There was a lurking danger that as he grew older he might become breezy. But as yet there was no sign of a draught. He was just delightfully exhilarating. He was not what women call handsome or divine, but he was rather what men call a smart-looking chap: fair, with bright blue eyes, and the most mischievous smile in London. He was unusually rapid in thought, speech and movement, without being restless, and his presence was an excellent cure for slackness, languor, strenuousness or a morbid sense of duty.

“You look as if you had only just got up,” remarked Bertha, as she gave him her hand. “Not a bit as though you’d been through the fatigues and worries and the heat and burden of the day.”

“Oh, that’s too bad!” he answered. “You know perfectly well I always get up in time to see the glorious sunset! Why this reproach? I don’t know that I’ve ever seen you very early in the day; I always regard you less as a daughter of the morning than as a minion of the moon.”

“How is Mrs. Hillier?” replied Bertha rather coldly.

“All right—I promise I won’t. Mary? Why Mary is well—very well—but just, perhaps, a teeny bit trying—just a shade wearing. No—no, I don’t mean that. … Well, I’m at your service for the play and so on. Shall I write to Rupert Denison and Miss Irwin? And will you all come and dine with me, and where shall we go?”

“Don’t you think something thrilling and exciting and emotional—or, perhaps, something light and frivolous?”

“For Rupert I advise certainly the trivial, the flippant. It would have a better effect. Why not go to the new Revue—‘That will be Fourpence’—where they have the two young Simultaneous Dancers, the Misses Zanie and Lunie Le Face—one, I fancy, is more simultaneous than the other, I forget which. They are delightful, and will wake Denison up. In fact, I don’t know who they wouldn’t wake up, they make such a row. They dance and sing, about Dixie and Honey and coons—and that sort of thing. They sing quite well, too—I mean for them.”

“But not for us? … No, I don’t want to take him with Madeline to anything that could be called a music-hall—something more correct for a jeune fille would be better. …”

“To lead to a proposal, you mean. Well, we’d better fall back upon His Majesty’s or Granville Barker. Poor Charlie! It’s hard lines on that boy, Bertha—he’s really keen on Miss Irwin.”

“I know; but what can we do? It’s Rupert Denison she cares about.”

“Likes him, does she?” said Nigel.

“Very much,” answered Bertha, who rarely used a strong expression, but whose eyes made the words emphatic.

Nigel whistled. “Oh, well, if it’s as bad as that!”

“It is. Quite.”

“Fancy! Lucky chap, old Rupert. Well, we must rush it through for them, I suppose. About the play—you want something serious, what price Shakespeare?”

“No price. Let’s go to the Russian Ballet.”“Capital!” cried Nigel, moving quickly to the telephone in case she should change her mind; “and we’ll dine at the Carlton first. May I use your telephone?”

“Please!”