In a moment of expansion, Sheila Armitage confided in me that she has worked it out, and that we are third cousins twice removed. I accept her word for this, because I have to work at other things, getting a living and so forth, while her sole occupation is to acquire a flair as a hostess, week-ends being her speciality.

I hope that I am not unkind to Sheila when I say that she seems to me more attractive when she is either in trouble or ill-health; in her more joyous moods I simply do not belong—and do not want to belong—to her life. A friend of mine once called her a social pirate, and there is no doubt that her method of collecting the people whom she wants is to besiege them until they eventually surrender. Why, however, Bobbie Outram is always asked to her smartest week-ends was a conundrum to me until I met her magnificently convalescing after influenza at Folkestone. For I know Bobbie, and I would run a mile or two any day to avoid him.

Sheila was in a bath-chair, but looked radiantly well, and at once gave me a list of her latest victims.

"They sound all right," I said. "But will Bobbie Outram like them?"

At this she gave a little gurgling laugh and put two fingers on my arm.

"Of course you know Bobbie. I forgot."

"I kicked him at school, I loathed him at Cambridge, and let him know it, and he is still all over me. He brags about you whenever he sees me before I see him."

"He is the greatest success I have ever had," she declared.

"Then Heaven help you," I replied.

"You don't understand; you think it's quite easy to collect——"

"People tell me you tried to found a salon, but only got as far as a Zoo," I interrupted.

For an instant she frowned, then she gurgled again.

"Brenda Thornton told you that," she protested. "It's just her jealousy. As a fact I'm quite good at getting only the right people. Fliers have rather had their day, though they are still useful, and I like an explorer or two for week-ends, though the best kind seems to be always exploring. But Brenda was getting ahead of me—I don't mind confessing that to you—until I thought of Bobbie Outram. He's my one stroke of genius; even David admits that."

"I never thought much of your husband's taste," I said brutally, and then, "in men," I added gently, as she was recovering from influenza.

She smiled again and continued:

"There is one thing that is indispensable to a successful week-end."

"It can't be Bobby Outram," I declared.

"It is, or somebody like him; but he is easily the best. Bobbie is my point of contact."

"He used often to be my boot's," I growled.

"The more you can fuse your guests the better," she went on, as if she were giving a lecture. "Everyone knows that; it's the A B C of entertaining; but they must have something to agree about—a sort of rallying point. And I was the first hostess to discover that no party is complete unless you have someone in it whom all the others can most cordially abuse."

"So that is Bobbie's mÉtier?" I said.

"The help that man has been to me on wet Sundays is beyond belief," she replied ecstatically; "and Brenda Thornton is absolutely furious."

"I never expected to be sorry for Outram, but——"

"My dear Jack, you needn't worry about Bobbie. He knows all right. I told him, and he enjoys it. He's really rather a dear."

But at this my gorge rose. "At any rate," I said, "he's going to Mrs. Thornton's from next Friday to Tuesday; he told me so yesterday."

"The little worm," said Sheila.

"'Worm' is the word," I said; and as we remained to abuse Bobbie for another ten minutes with much mutual goodwill I suppose he had once more justified his existence by a successful feat of "fusing."