side.

"He's afraid of my critical eye, Mrs. Sylvester," said Rainham
gravely. "That's what it is. Well, if you don't show it me now, you
won't have another opportunity yet awhile."

"That's it, Eve," exclaimed Lightmark hastily. "I'm afraid of his
critical what's-his-name. You know he can be awfully severe
sometimes, the old beggar, and I don't want him to curl me up and
annihilate me while you're here."

"I don't believe he would, if it were _ever_ so bad," said Eve, only
half satisfied. "And it isn't; it's awfully good. But it's too dark
to see anything now."

"By Jove, so it is! Mrs. Sylvester, I'm awfully sorry; I always like
the twilight myself. Rainham, would you mind ringing the bell.
Thanks. Oh, don't apologize; the handle always comes off. I never
use it myself, except when I have visitors. I go and shout in the
passage; but Mrs. Grumbit objects to being shouted for when there
are visitors on the premises. Great hand at etiquette, Mrs. Grumbit
is."

The lady in question arrived at this juncture, fortified by a new
and imposing cap, and laden with candles and a tea-tray, which she
deposited, with much clatter of teaspoons, on a table by Mrs.
Sylvester's side.

"Thank you, Mrs. Grumbit. And now will you come to a poor bachelor's
assistance, and pour out tea, Mrs. Sylvester? And I'm very sorry,
but I haven't got any sugar-tongs. I generally borrow Copal's, but
the beggar's gone out and locked his door. You ladies will have to
imagine you're at Oxford."

Mrs. Sylvester looked bewildered, and paused with one hand on the
Satsuma teapot.

"Don't you know, mamma, it isn't--form, don't you say? to have
sugar-tongs at Oxford? It was one of the things Charles always
objected to. I believe he tried to introduce them, but people always
threw them out of the window. _I_ think they're an absurd invention."

Rainham, as he watched her slender fingers with their dimpled
knuckles, daintily selecting the most eligible lumps out of the
cracked blue-and-white china teacup which did service for a
sugar-basin, unhesitatingly agreed with her; though Mrs. Sylvester
seemed to think her argument that sugar-tongs could be so
pretty--"Queen Anne, you know"--entirely unanswerable.

It was not until Mrs. Grumbit broke in upon the cosy little party to
announce that the ladies' carriage was at the door that Rainham
remembered the real object of his expedition.

Then, when Eve, warmly wrapped in her furs, and with the glow of t