ay he caught nine
trains and a motor 'bus, which reconciled him to living, which he is
still doing."

"Are you sure he was your uncle?" asked Daisy.

"Not quite; but it is much better style to say a thing happened to your
uncle than to confess that you made it up. If you make things up people
expect you to write a novel or something, whereas nothing can be
expected from you if you say it happened to your uncle. I haven't got
any uncles. That is such a good thing; I can't be an anxiety to them.
And nobody is an anxiety to me."

The dining-room looked towards the front of the house, and Daisy turned
suddenly.

"Ah! surely that is the crunch of a motor on the gravel," she said. "I
expect it is they."

That it was a motor was at once put beyond the region of doubt by a
succession of loud hoots, and in a couple of minutes Jeannie appeared in
the doorway.

"Dear Alice," she said, "I apologize most abjectly; at least, the motor
apologizes. Lord Lindfield made it apologize just now at the top of its
voice. Didn't you hear it? Don't scold us. We missed the train by about
twenty minutes, as it is always best to do things thoroughly. Shall we
dress, or may we come into dinner just as we are?"

Jeannie looked radiantly round while chairs and places were being laid
for them, shaking hands with those nearest her, smiling at others, and
kissing her hand across the table to Daisy. The swift movement--it had
been extremely swift for the last ten miles after the car had got to
work again--and the change from the cool night air into this warm bright
room had brought the blood to her cheeks, and gave a wonderful sparkle
and youthfulness to her face, and she sat down at the top of one of the
sides of the table with Lord Lindfield between her and Alice.

"And we are so hungry," she said; "for the last half-hour we have
talked of nothing but food. I couldn't look at the pink after-glow
of the sunset because it reminded me of strawberry fool, and Lord
Lindfield nearly burst into tears because there was a cloud shaped
like a fish. And we had no tea, you see, because we were missing our
train at tea-time."

Dinner went on its usual way after this, and Daisy succeeded in giving a
less distracted attention to Jim Crowfoot, for up till their arrival she
knew that she had really been thinking about them only. She still felt a
little hurt that instead of coming down here early to-day Lord Lindfield
had been prevented from doing that only