ent manner about
the various ways of preparing crabs. He liked them in
five styles; I wouldn't subscribe to more than three.
That little man with the orchid that daddy has just seized
is the author of the last of the 'Rulers of India'
series--Sir Somebody Something, K.C.S.I. My unconscionable
humbug of a parent probably wants to get something
approaching a fact out of him. Daddy's writing a thing
for one of the reviews on the elective principle for
India this week. He says he's the only writer on Indian
subjects who isn't disqualified by ever having been there,
and is consequently quite free of prejudice."

"Ah!" said Elfrida, "how _banal!_ I thought you said
there would be something real here--somebody in whose
garment's hem there would be virtue."

"And I suggest the dress-coat of the historian of the
Semitic nations!" Janet laughed. "Well, if nearly all
our poets are dead and our novelists in the colonies, I
can't help it, can I! Here is Mr. Kendal, at all events."

Kendal came up, with his perfect manners, and immediately
it seemed to Elfrida that their little group became
distinct from the rest, more important, more worthy of
observation. Kendal never added anything to the unities
of their conversation when he joined these two; he seemed
rather to break up what they had to say to each other
and attract it to himself. He always gave an accent to
the life and energy of their talk; but he made them both
self-conscious and watchful--seemed to put them, as it
were, upon their guard against one another, in a way
which Janet found vaguely distressing. It was invariably
as if Kendal turned their intercourse into a joust by
his mere presence as spectator; as if--Janet put it
plainly to herself, reddening--they mutely asked him to
bestow the wreath on one of them. She almost made up her
mind to ask Elfrida where their understanding went to
when John Kendal came up, but she had not found it possible
yet. There was an embarrassing chance that Elfrida did
not feel their change of attitude, which would entail
nameless surmises.

"You ought to be at work," Janet said severely to Kendal,
"back at Barbizon or in the fields somewhere. It won't
be always June."

"Ah, would you banish him!" Elfrida exclaimed daintily.
"Surely Hyde Park is rustic enough--in June."

Kendal smiled into her face. "It combines all the charm
of the country," he began.

"And the chic of the town," Elfrida finished for him
gaily. "I know--I'v