OUR boys are such very great friends—I really felt I must know you!” cried Mrs. Pickering in the most cordial way. She spoke with a very slight Cockney accent. She bristled with aigrettes and sparkled with jewels. Her bodice was cut very low, her sleeves very short, and her white gloves came over the braceleted elbows. She wore a very high, narrow turban, green satin shoes and stockings, and altogether was dressed rather excessively; she looked like one of Louis Bauer’s drawings in Punch. She was certainly most striking in appearance, and a little alarming in a quiet room, but most decidedly pretty and with a very pleasant smile.

Lady Kellynch received her with great courtesy, but was not sufficiently adaptable and subtle to conceal at once the fact that Mrs. Pickering’s general appearance and manner had completely taken her breath away. Also, she was annoyed that Lady Gertrude MÜnster was there to-day. Lady Gertrude was one of her great cards. She was a clever, glib, battered-looking, elderly woman, who, since her husband had once been at the Embassy in Vienna, had assumed a slight foreign accent; it was meant to be Austrian but sounded Scotch. Lady Gertrude looked rather muffled and seemed to have more thick veils and feather boas on than was necessary for the time of the year. She was an old friend of Lady Kellynch’s, and they detested each other, but never missed an opportunity of meeting, chiefly in order to impress each other, in one way or another, or cause each other envy or annoyance.

Lady Kellynch was always very specially careful whom she asked, or allowed, to meet Lady Gertrude. She had wanted Bertha particularly to-day and was vexed at this unexpected arrival.

“Your daughter-in-law, my dear?” asked Lady Gertrude, in a surprised tone, putting up her long tortoiseshell glass.

“Oh dear, no, Gertrude! Surely you know Bertha by sight! I never had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Pickering before.”

“Charmed to meet you,” said Mrs. Pickering again, giving a kind of curtsy and smiling at Lady Gertrude. “Ah, there’s my little friend! Well, Cliff, didn’t we have fun the other day? Eustace was sorry he couldn’t come to-day. We had the greatest larks, Lady Kellynch! I play with the kids just like one of themselves. We’ve got a great big room fixed up on purpose for Cissie and Eustace to romp. We haven’t been there very long yet, Lady Kellynch. You know that big corner house in Hamilton Place leading into Park Lane. My husband thinks there’s nothing good enough for the children. If it comes to that, he thinks there’s nothing good enough for me.” She giggled. “He gave me this emerald brooch only this morning. ‘Oh, Tom,’ I said, ‘what a silly you are. You don’t want to make a fuss about birthdays now we’re getting on.’ But he is silly about me! It’s a nice little thing, isn’t it?” she said, showing it to Lady Gertrude, who put up her glass to examine it.

“Lady Gertrude MÜnster—Mrs. Pickering,” said Lady Kellynch. “Some tea?”

“Thanks, no tea. It’s a pretty little thing, isn’t it, Lady MÜnster?”

“Rather nice. Are they real?” asked Lady Gertrude.

Mrs. Pickering laughed very loudly. “You’re getting at me. I shouldn’t be so pleased with it if it came out of a cracker! But what I always say about presents, Lady Kellynch, is, it isn’t so much the kind thought, it’s the value of the gift I look at. No, I meant——”

“What you said, I suppose,” said Lady Gertrude, who was rather enjoying herself, as she saw her hostess was irritated.

“Whoever’s that pretty picture over there?”

Mrs. Pickering got up and went to look at the piano.

Lady Kellynch still retained (with several other passÉ fashions) the very South Kensington custom of covering up her large piano with a handsome piece of Japanese embroidery, which was caught up at intervals into bunchy bits of drapery, fastened by pots of flowers with sashes round their necks and with a very large number of dark photographs in frames, so very artistic in their heavy shading that one saw only a gleam of light occasionally on the tip of the nose or the back of the neck—all the rest in shadow—all with very large dashing signatures slanting across the corners, chiefly of former dim social celebrities or present well-known obscurities. The photograph she was looking at now was a pretty one of Bertha.

“Ah, that is my daughter-in-law.”

Lady Kellynch pointed it out to Lady Gertrude.

“This is pretty—what you can see of it.”

“Here she is herself.”Bertha came in.

“Mrs. Pickering—Mrs. Percy Kellynch.”

The hostess gave Bertha an imploring look. She took in the situation at a glance and drew Mrs. Pickering a little aside, where Lady Gertrude could not listen to her piercing Cockney accent.

Clifford joined the group.

If Lady Kellynch had been, almost against her will, reminded by something in her visitor of a pantomime, Bertha saw far more. She was convinced at once that the rich eldest son of Pickering, the Jam King, had been dazzled and carried away, some fourteen years ago, and bestowed his enormous fortune and himself, probably against his family’s wish, on a little provincial chorus girl. Her cheery determination to get on, and an evident sense of humour, made Bertha like her, in spite of her snobbishness and her manner. She was a change, at least, to meet here, and when Mrs. Pickering produced her card, which she did to everyone to whom she spoke, Bertha promised to call and asked her also. Of course one would have to be a shade careful whom one asked to meet her, but probably it would be a jolly house to go to. And nowadays! Still, Bertha was a little surprised that Clifford was so infatuated with the mother of his friend. She forgot that at twelve years old one is not fastidious; the taste is crude. If he admired Bertha’s fair hair, he thought Mrs. Pickering’s brilliant gold curls still prettier. Besides, Mrs. Pickering petted and made much of him, and was very kind.

She stayed much too long for a first visit, and as she went of course produced another card, saying to the muffled lady:

“Pleased to have met you, Lady MÜnster. I hope you’ll call and see our new house. We’re going to give a ball soon. We’re entertaining this season.”

“She certainly is,” murmured Lady Gertrude. Then, as she left: “My dear, where do you pick up your extraordinary friends?”

This was a particularly nasty one for Lady Kellynch, who made such a point of her exclusiveness.

“Clifford is responsible for this, I think,” said Bertha. “The boys are at the same school, and they’ve been very kind to him. I think she’s very amusing, and a good sort.”

“Oh, quite a character! She told me she met her husband at Blackpool. He fell in love with her when she was playing Prince Charming in No. 2 B Company on tour with the pantomime Little Miss Muffet.”

“Just what one would have thought!” said Lady Kellynch, rather tragically.“I’ve come to ask you if you’ll go with Percy to the Queen’s Hall to-morrow,” Bertha said. “He wants you to come so much.”

The mother delightedly consented.

“Curious fad that is the mania for serious music,” said Lady Gertrude. “You don’t share your husband’s taste for it, it seems?”

“Well, I do, really. But it’s such a treat for him to take his mother out!” said Bertha tactfully.

“I say, Bertha, may I come back with you? I’m going back to school next week.”

“Of course you shall, if your mother likes.”

His mother was glad to agree. She did not feel inclined to discuss Mrs. Pickering with the boy that evening.

“Try and make him see what an awful woman she is,” she murmured.

“I will; but it isn’t dangerous,” laughed Bertha. “Madeline is spending the evening with me to-morrow.”

“Oh yes, that nice quiet girl. By the way, do you know, I heard she was engaged to young Charles Hillier. And then somewhere else I was told it was Mr. Rupert Denison.”

“It’s neither,” calmly replied Bertha, “But I believe each of them proposed to her.”“Is that a fact? Dear me! Just fancy her refusing them both! What a grief for poor Mrs. Irwin!”

Bertha laughed as she remembered that as a matter of fact Madeline had accepted both, within two days.