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delightful news.
    'When last I see this old farceur it is in New York, and he is jumping out of the window of a speakeasy with two policemen after him. Great fun. Great good fun. Do you remember, my Packy, that night when...'
    'Are you off somewhere, Veek?' asked Packy hastily.
    'Oh, yes. But do you remember... ?'
    'Where?'
    'I go to St Rocque. I catch the train at a quarter past four to Southampton.'
    Packy sighed a sigh of relief.
    'Well, do you? It's a debatable point. I don't know if you have happened to notice that it is now four-fourteen.'
    'Zut!' exclaimed the Vicomte, and vanished like an eel into mud.
    Beatrice was the first to break a silence during which the warm summer day seemed to cool off several degrees.
    'You do know the most awful people.'
    'Oh, the Veek's all right.'
    'From what I have heard of him I don't agree with you.'
    A porter opened the gates, and they passed through. They arrived at an empty first-class compartment, and Packy took up his stand at the door to repel intruders.
    He had fallen into a meditative silence. He had just discovered, and was shocked to discover, that this meeting with the Vicomte de Blissac had affected him with a well-defined spasm of what the ancient Greeks called pothos, a sudden, deplorable nostalgia for that regrettable past of which the other had formed a part.
    He fought it down. It was revolting, he told himself, that the fiancé of a wonderful girl like Beatrice should not be utterly contented with his lot. True, he and the Veek had had some pretty good times together in the old days, but how far, far happier he was now, a reformed character under the personal supervision of the most beautiful girl in England.
    By way of helping to stifle the quite improper wistfulness which the sight of his old friend had aroused in him, he reached for her hand and pressed it.
    'It would be so good for you,' said Beatrice, and Packy became aware that his reverie had caused him to miss her latest remarks.
    'I'm sorry' he said. 'I was thinking of something. What was that?'
    'I was just saying that I wished you would try to make friends with somebody worth while, like Mr Eggleston. He is the sort of man I would like you to know.'
    'I must give him a buzz some time.'
    He turned aside to stare sourly at a grocer named With-erspoon who was showing a disposition to invade the compartment. And so forbidding was his eye that the latter quailed and passed on, taking with him Mrs Witherspoon and their four children, Percy, Bertram, Alice and Daisy.
    '... at a quarter to five,' said Beatrice.
    Once more Packy found that he had missed something.
    'What's that?'
    'Mr Eggleston wants you to meet him at a quarter to five in the lobby of the Northumberland Hotel. He is giving you tea.'
    'What!'
    And I want you to cultivate him. He is a most interesting man, and he will do you a lot of good.'
    A cloud had come over Packy's cheerful face.
    'Have I really got to go and swill tea with this side-whiskered bird?'
    'Don't call him a side-whiskered bird. Yes, you have. And the more you can be with him, the better. A friend like that will keep you from getting into mischief
    Packy started.
    'Mischief? Me!'
    'You know perfectly well that, left to yourself, you would get into hot water of some kind the moment my back was turned.'
    'I wouldn't dream...'
    'Have you forgotten what happened when I went off to Norfolk two months ago?'
    'But I explained that – explained it fully. I got mixed up in a birthday party....'
    'Yes, and I don't want you to get mixed up in any more. They were very upset about that at home. You know how particular Father and Mother are.'
    Packy nodded penitently. Modern laxness, he was aware, had not touched the Earl of Stableford and his countess.
    Aunt Gwendolyn said you were a flippertygibbet.'
    A what?'
    A flippertygibbet.'
    Packy drew himself up a little haughtily. Comment and criticism from his affianced he was prepared to accept. But when it came to her moth-eaten relations shooting