the lady.

'There. You hear!'

He interrupted Lord John's inquiry as to the seriousness of Miss
Levering's unpopular and mysterious programme for the afternoon. But the
lady quietly confirmed it, and looked over her hostess's shoulder at the
plan-sheet that Lady John was silently holding out between two extended
hands.

'Haled indoors on a day like this'--Greatorex affected a mighty scorn of
the document--'to talk about--Public Sanitation, forsooth! Why, God
bless my soul, do you realize that's _drains_!'

'I'm dreadfully afraid it is,' said Miss Levering, smiling down at the
architectural drawing.

'And we in the act of discussing Italian literature!' Greatorex held out
the little book with an air of comic despair. 'Perhaps you'll tell me
that isn't a more savoury topic for a lady.'

'But for the tramp population less conducive to savouriness--don't you
think--than baths?' She took the book from him, shutting her
handkerchief in the place where his finger had been.

'No, no'--Greatorex, Panama in hand, was shaking his piebald head--'I
can't understand this morbid interest in vagrants. You're too--much
too---- Leave it to others!'

'What others?'

'Oh, the sort of woman who smells of india-rubber,' he said, with
smiling impertinence. 'The typical English spinster. You've seen her.
Italy's full of her. She never goes anywhere without a mackintosh and a
collapsible bath--_rubber_. When you look at her it's borne in upon you
that she doesn't only smell of rubber. She is rubber, too.'

They all laughed.

'Now you frivolous people go away,' Lady John said. 'We've only got a
few minutes to talk over the terms of the late Mr. Barlow's munificence
before the carriage comes for Miss Levering.'

In the midst of the general movement to the garden, Mrs. Freddy asked
Farnborough did he know she'd got that old horror to give Lady John
L8000 for her charity before he died?

'Who got him to?' demanded Greatorex.

'Miss Levering,' answered Lady John. 'He wouldn't do it for me, but she
brought him round.'

'Bah-ee Jove!' said Freddy. 'I expect so.'

'Yes.' Mrs. Freddy beamed in turn at her lord and at Farnborough as she
strolled with them through the window. '_Isn't_ she wonderful?'

'Too wonderful,' said Greatorex to the lady in question, lowering his
voice, 'to waste your time on the wrong people.'

'I shall waste less of my time after this.' Miss Levering spoke
thoughtfully.

'I'm relieved to hear it. I can't