"Rot! You may think you do, but you don't. You're much too hot-blooded
to stick that kind of marriage long. I know I wouldn't. And it serves
you right if you ever make a mess of it."

"I thought Sir Archibald only pitied me," said Mavis, in extenuation of
her marriage.

"Pity! pity! He's a man, not a bloodless nincompoop," said Miss Toombs.
"And it's you I have to thank for seeing him so often," she added, as
her anger again flamed up.

"Sir Archibald?" asked Mavis.

"He sees me to talk about you," said Miss Toombs sorrowfully. "And he
never looks twice at me. He doesn't even like me enough to ask me to go
away for a week-end with him. I'm simply nothing to him, and that's the
truth."

"I think you a dear, anyway. And I've got you a rise of a pound a week."

"What?"

Mavis repeated her information.

"That'll buy me some summer muslins I've long had my eye on, and one or
two bits of jewellery. Then, perhaps, he'll look at me," declared Miss
Toombs.

The next moment she caught sight of her reflection in Perrott's (the
grocer's) window, at which she cried:

"Just look at me! What on earth could ever make that attractive?"

"Your kind nature," replied Mavis. "You're much too fond of
under-valuing your appearance."

"It's all damned unfair!" cried Miss Toombs passionately. "What use are
your looks to you? What fun do you get out of life? Why--oh why haven't
I your face and figure?"

"What would you do with it?" asked Mavis.

"Get him, get him somehow. If he wouldn't marry me I'd manage to
'live.' And he's not a cad like Charlie Perigal," cried Miss Toombs, as
she hurried off to work.

When Mavis got back, she learned that the morning post had brought an
invitation for the Devitts and herself for a dinner that Major Perigal
was giving in two weeks' time. Major Perigal, also, wrote privately to
Mavis, urging her to give him the honour of her company; he assured her
that his son would not be present.

Little else but the approaching dinner was discussed by the Devitts for
the rest of the day. As if to palliate their interest in the matter,
they explained to Mavis how the proffered hospitality was alien to the
ways of the giver of the feast. At heart they were greatly pleased with
the invitation; it promised a meeting with county folk on equal terms,
together with a termination to the aloofness with which Major Perigal
had treated the Devitts since his son's marriage to Victoria. They
accepted with alac