appellation "Edith" did not spring naturally or spontaneously to
Leonetta's lips. On the other hand "Peachy" seemed to belong to another
and previous existence. She did not wish her mother to suspect,
however, that she had used the term "mother" with deliberate intent to
annoy.

"That's right, my child," cried Miss Mallowcoid. "It is really
refreshing to hear one of you girls, at least, addressing your mother in
the usual and proper fashion!"

Leonetta with her cheeks ablaze, glared at her aunt menacingly.

"Well, I don't like it," she blurted out. "It was a slip of the tongue.
Cleo and I much prefer the name Edith."

She spoke sharply and even rudely, seeing that it was her aunt she was
addressing, but Mrs. Delarayne, who was beginning to understand the
penitential spirit she was in, smiled kindly at her notwithstanding.

"I always look upon them as three sisters," Sir Joseph exclaimed
somewhat laboriously, "whatever they call one another."

Miss Mallowcoid scoffed, and Mrs. Delarayne patted his hand
persuasively. "You get on with your dinner," she said playfully.

Meanwhile Miss Mallowcoid had not taken her vindictive eyes off her
younger niece, and the latter in sheer desperation plunged into an
animated but very perfunctory conversation with her right-hand
neighbour, Guy Tyrrell.

It is time that this young man should be described. He was the type
usually called healthy and "clean-minded." He loved all sports and all
kinds of exercise, particularly walking, and he could talk about these
out-of-door occupations fairly amusingly. He was fair, blue-eyed,
clean-shaven, and healthy-looking, and he believed in the possibility of
being a "pal" to a girl,--particularly if she happened to be a flapper.
His age was twenty-seven.

It is not generally understood what precisely is implied by the so-called
healthy "clean-minded" unmarried Englishman of twenty-seven, or
thereabouts. As a rule the epithet "clean-minded" sums up not merely a
mental condition, but a method of life. It signifies that the young man to
whom it may justly be applied is either a master, or at least a lover, of
games, that his outlook is what is known as "breezy," that he observes the
rules of cricket in every relation to his fellow creatures, and that he is
capable of enduring defeat or success with the same impassable calm and
good-nature. Now it would be absurd to deny that here we have a very
imposing catalogue of highly desirable characteris