anyone. Will you sit here, please? I am sorry to say my uncle
is in town to-day."

"Where are the three boys?" asked Max.

Olga turned to him with relief. "They have gone for an all-day
paper-chase with the Rectory crowd and taken lunch with them."

"Why didn't you go too?" he asked. "Too lazy?"

"Too busy," she returned briefly.

"That's only an excuse," said Max.

She glanced at him. "It's a sound one anyhow."

"What are you going to do this afternoon?" he asked.

"Mend."

"Mend what?"

"Stockings," said Olga.

"Great Scot!" said Max. "Do you mend the stockings of the entire
family?"

"Including yours," said Olga.

"Oh, I say!" he protested. "That wasn't in the contract, was it? Pitch
'em into my room. I'll mend them myself or do without."

"One pair more or less doesn't make much difference," said Olga. "As to
doing without,--well, of course, you're a man or you wouldn't make such
a suggestion."

"You've thrown that in my teeth before," he observed. "I think you might
remember that I am hardly responsible for my sex. It's my misfortune,
not my fault."

She smiled, her sudden brief smile, but made no rejoinder.

Major Hunt-Goring and Violet, who had undertaken to cut up his meal for
him, were engrossed in a frothy conversation which it was obvious that
neither desired to have interrupted.

Max glanced towards them before he abruptly started another subject with
Olga.

"How is Mrs. Briggs?"

Olga coloured hotly. "Oh, she seemed all right."

Max surveyed her rather pointedly. "Well? What had she got to say about
me?"

"About you?" said Olga.

He laughed and looked away. "Even so, fair lady. I conclude it was
something you would rather not repeat. I had already fathomed the fact
that I was not beloved by Mrs. Briggs."

"It's your own fault," said Olga, speaking on the impulse to escape from
a difficult subject. "You have such a knack of making all your patients
afraid of you."

"Really?" said Max.

"Oh, don't be supercilious!" she said quickly. "You know it's true."

"It must be if you say so," he rejoined, "though there again it is more
my misfortune than my fault. If my patients elect to make me the butt of
their neurotic imagination, surely I am more to be pitied than blamed."

"No, I don't pity you at all," Olga said. "It's want of sympathy, you
know. You go and do a splendid thing like--like--" She stopped suddenly.

"Please go on!" said Max. "Let's hear my good points, by al