ry him. I'm dreadfully glad you think that I can snub
or encourage him, because that means that you think he cares. I should
be perfectly miserable if I thought he didn't."

"I don't think you need be miserable," said Gladys.

"I'm not. Oh, there's the Prime Minister; I shall bow. That was a
failure. He looked at me like a fish. How rude the Cabinet makes
people! The Cabinet always goes about with the British Empire
pick-a-back. At least, it thinks the British Empire is pick-a-back.
The Empire doesn't. About Lord Lindfield. He's turning grey over the
temples, and I think that is so frightfully attractive. Of course,
he's awfully old; he must be nearly forty. He's dining to-night, isn't
he? Then I shall arrange the table. Yes, you needn't look like that. I
shan't make him take me in. He's supposed to be wicked, too. Oh,
Gladys, it is so nice if men go playing about, and then fall in love
with me. It's worth heaps of the other kind. Oh, don't look shocked;
it is silly to look shocked, and so easy."

The hansom waited for a moment at the junction of Orchard Street and
Oxford Street, and the innumerable company of locomotives sped by it.
Motors shot by with a whirr and a bubbling, hansoms jingled westwards,
large slow vans made deliberate progress, delaying the traffic as some
half-built dam impedes the course of flowing water till it finds a way
round it, and through the streams of wheels and horses pedestrians
scuttled in and out like bolted rabbits. The whole tide of movement was
at its height, and the little islands in mid-street were crowded with
folk who were cut off, it would seem, by the rising flood-water from all
communication with the shore, with but remote chance of escape. Then an
omnipotent policeman stepped out into the surging traffic, held up a
compelling and resistless hand, and at his gesture the tides, more
obedient to him than to Canute, ceased to flow, and the cross-movement
began, which permitted Daisy and her cousin to cross the stream. But
whether it was that the stoppage in their passage made a corresponding
halt in her thoughts, or whether, as was more likely, she had said all
that she meant to say on the subject of Lord Lindfield, she began, just
as they started to move again, on something widely different.

"And Aunt Jeannie comes to-morrow," she said, "which is quite
delightful. For I do believe I've missed her every single day since she
went away a year ago. And if I do that, you may depend