e explained, "we can squash up _good_ people as much
as we like, because their clothes don't matter; but women in
wedding-frocks will be furious if they don't get enough elbow-room to
show themselves."

Accordingly a marquee was erected in the garden at the back of the
house, opening into the dining-room through the French windows, and it
was arranged that Dicky and Dilly were to take their stand in the middle
of the same, what time the guests, having lubricated their utterance at
the _buffet_ in the dining-room _en route_, filed past and delivered
their congratulations. After that the company was to overflow into the
garden, there to be moved by a concord of sweet sounds emanating from a
band of assassins in pseudo-Hungarian uniforms.

"And if it rains," concluded Kitty desperately, "they must have an
overflow meeting in the basement--that's all!"

My library, as I had feared, was appropriated for the presents, and for
several days I transacted the business of State at the wash-hand-stand
in my dressing-room, while a stream of callers, ranging from the members
of a Working Men's Club in which Dilly was fitfully interested, down to
an organisation of Kitty's whose exact title I can never recall (but
which Dicky, on first seeing them, immediately summed up as "The Hundred
Worst Women"), filed solemnly past rows of filigree coffee-services,
silver-backed hair-brushes, and art pen-wipers.

Of the bride-elect I saw little, and when I did, she was usually
standing, in a state of considerable _deshabille_, amid a kneeling group
of myrmidons, who, with mouths filled with pins and brows seamed with
anxiety, were remorselessly building her into some edifice of shimmering
silk and filmy lace, oblivious of their victim's plaintive intimations
that she was fit to drop.

Dicky invited Robin to be his best man, a proceeding which, while it
roused some surprise among those who were expecting him to fix upon a
friend of longer standing and greater distinction, showed his good
sense, for my secretary proved himself a model of organisation and
helpfulness. Although born and reared up in the straitest sect of some
Scottish denomination, about which I am unable to particularise beyond
the fact that they regarded the use of harmoniums in churches as "the
worship of men's feet," he betrayed a surprising knowledge of Anglican
ritual and stage effect.

On the wedding morning, having left the bridegroom securely tucked up in
bed, under s