the date?" and it was humiliating to reply continually in the
negative.

Lovers in books were always urgent in this respect; the lovers she had
known in real life had been no less impetuous, and in Dane's case there
seemed no reason for delay. He was old enough; he had enough money--
then why should they wait? Teresa could not bring herself to introduce
such a topic, but she did tentatively mention the honeymoon one day,
asking Dane where he would take her. For a moment he looked startled,
but at the hint of a foreign tour he brightened, and they spent a
delightful hour, discussing routes, and rival places of interest.
Teresa had never yet crossed the Channel, and Dane as a world-traveller
felt a prospective pleasure in the thought of introducing her to fresh
scenes. To him it seemed pitiful to think of a human creature having
spent twenty-four years in Chumley, with no change but an occasional
month in seaside lodgings. He displayed frank pity for such a fate, but
Teresa exhibited no pity for herself. She was very fond of Chumley; she
was fond of the Chumley people; it was nice to travel now and then for a
few weeks at a time, but she preferred a settled life. Dane realised
with amusement that Rome itself would be judged from a Chumley
standpoint.

The Squire was highly amused at the story of Grizel's first dinner
party, and pointed many morals thereon for his wife's benefit. Almost
it seemed that he blamed her because his own dining-room ceiling had
never descended, and opened the way for such an unconventional evening.

"But you would have sent them away from the door! Given the message to
Johnson, and turned them away without even seeing them yourself."

"I should. I plead guilty, Bernard. I should have flown straight to a
bath. It takes a Grizel to make herself charming with whitewashed hair,
but to do me justice I should _not_ have chosen the morning of a dinner
party to drag about heavy furniture in the room overhead."

"Did she do that?"

"She had it done. And the house being jerry built, the new ceilings are
only guaranteed to stay up, if they are not pushed. She pushed, and in
revenge this particular ceiling loosened itself slowly, waiting for the
crucial moment... They have gone up to town for a week, while the room
is put right, so Grizel will feel that the game is worth the candle."

"Humph!" The Squire was silent, seeing that he himself had persistently
refused to take his wife to to